Straw Dogs (2011)Is it better to try to be something different and new, or to be faithful to the expectations others have about your predecessor? Straw Dogs (2011) is a psychological thriller about a successful, yet mild-mannered Hollywood screenwriter named David Sumner (James Marsden), who follows his beautiful, young wife, Amy (Kate Bosworth), back to her rustic home town of Blackwater, Mississippi, where he can continue his work on a new screenplay in presumed peace and quiet. Tensions escalate after Amy catches the eye of her erstwhile beau and former local football star, Charlie Venner (Alexander Skarsgård), who sees Amy's return home as symbolic of other unexpressed needs.
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Written and directed by Rod Lurie, Straw Dogs is a remake of the controversial film of the same name from 1971 by Sam Peckinpah--which was itself adapted from the novel, "The Siege of Trencher's Farm", by Gordon Williams. As a result, comparisons between the two films are not only inescapable, but crucial to understanding the tone of the later film. While Peckinpah's film is set in Cornwall, England, and David is an outsider in part because he is a foreigner, Lurie's film is set in the Deep South. Despite the dramatic difference in settings, this remake feels very much at home here, because the core conflict is universal, that being the emergent crisis between our savage human nature and our attempts to conceal it with culture and status. Both depictions of David present him as ineffectual and shocked by violence, like when rage-fueled lush Tom "Coach" Heddon (James Woods) shatters a beer stein with his hand while demanding "one for the road" at the local watering hole. But while Peckinpah's David seems genuinely afraid of the bigger, meaner Englishmen of Amy's native land, Lurie's David exudes a kind of arrogance that comes from being accustomed to letting his money do the heavy lifting for him in life. Our first introduction to David is preceded by a close-up of the hood ornament of his classic Jaguar--a car that is more of a status symbol than a passion, evidenced when he has to rely on a mechanic to change his tire for him after he spins out. And while Peckinpah's David lords his intellect over Amy and becomes frustrated when she acts (as he sees it) like a child, this David is indifferent to his wife; like his car, she seems to be little more than a pretty ornament he has bought for himself. Even when he talks about the screenplay he is writing--about the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II--he does so in a way that suggests that no one else in town would "understand" or even be interested in something other than drinking, going to church, or watching football. And while this film's Amy is more emotionally mature, there yet remains the unspoken question about what it really was that drew her to David in the first place. She was an aspiring actress who had a background role in a TV show David was writing, and was apparently upset at her lack of presence in it. Yet this is the only real detail about these two people meeting, and leaves the audience to wonder where the magic was in the first place, because it appears that she has given up acting to be a wife to David instead. Was Amy attracted to the arguably handsome David, or merely to his success and what that promised? Did he intimate that he would make her a star if she married him, or did she see a way to live comfortably without effort? There is even an off-hand comment that David makes that suggests that he knows that he is the breadwinner of the couple, and condescends to Amy (and her former neighbors) for not doing actual "work". And though David is thoroughly engrossed in his writing and research, he diminishes the work others do apparently because they don't make as much money for doing it. There doesn't appear to be any bad blood between Amy and David when they come to Blackwater; on the contrary, they seem like a happy pair of newlyweds. But like with the prior film, the story explores how Amy has never truly left her past behind her, and that coming home rekindles old feelings, whether she wants to admit it or not...be it love, desire, fear, or resentment.
The idea of "manhood" as having defined (yet inconsistent) characteristics is shared by both movies, but this film calls into question whether it comes from having financial security (e.g. David) or through skill and prowess, like with Charlie. This interpretation of Charlie represents the biggest difference between the two films, taking a more sympathetic attitude toward him, making him a "Heathcliff" kind of figure from "Wuthering Heights". Charlie approaches Amy as she and David have lunch in a bar with an effortlessly subtle swagger that only works for someone who knows that he is an alpha male. He refers to his ex as "Amy-cakes" and doesn't give more than a passing glance at her new husband sitting right beside her. Yet as his roofing colleagues observe, Charlie has a "silver tongue", and has already been contracted to fix the roof of her late father's barn, so David and Charlie will be forced to see a lot more of one another. Of course, Charlie is no dope; he is not only skilled in dialectic, but in his craft as well, and is even able to fleece David for a large chunk of change despite being let go by him later on. When he and his crew show up at the crack of dawn amid the sound of hard rock and hammering shingles, the groggy David tries to politely ask them to start later. Charlie seizes the opportunity to literally and figuratively "look down" on David as his soft employer clumsily clamors up the ladder to his level. With a rare talent for passive-aggressiveness, Charlie frequently reminds David how "things are done around here". Much more of Charlie's role in the community is hinted at in this movie than in the original, largely through a conversation David and Amy have, which also does much to explain the movie's title. David compares Charlie and men like him as "straw dogs", which were once held up in reverence only to be cast aside. He is referring to how they were once proud stars of the local football team under Tom Heddon, but discovered that they had no real purpose afterwards, so have been left to do work like roofing. But David's comparison to an obscure ancient Chinese practice in response to Amy's displeasure at these men ogling her as she goes jogging only reinforces that he also uses his education to make himself feel superior to others. This film makes it easier to identify just why Charlie and his crew are so acrimonious toward David, not just because David comes into town acting all high and mighty, but because Charlie's jealousy over Amy has passed on to his work buddies. They sense his subtle anger, and support their ally, even if through disturbing and terrible acts of spite and revenge. One of the strangest episodes of shock and violence comes when David discovers their cat strangled and hanging in the bedroom closet. It becomes more evident in this film that even though Charlie was not the culprit, surely one of his chums was, and did so in a twisted way to show sympathy for the pain he has felt by "punishing" David and Amy for seemingly causing it, as the incident ratchets up the tension between not just David and Charlie, but David and Amy.
There are moments where you might be tempted to see Charlie as someone only trying to educate David on the ways of their community, like when he offers him some "friendly advice" after walking out of a sermon. Yet Charlie still longs for his "glory days", and sees Amy as a part of that image of what his "best self" is, as he is constantly reminded of from a photo of the two of them--him in his letter jacket--from back when. This interpretation helps add some context to what remains one of the most controversial moments from Peckinpah's film--and arguably this one, too--when Charlie forces his way into Amy's house while David has been taken hunting by his crew, and then forces himself on his wife. And even when afterward it appears that there just may be some grain of truth in the idea that Amy still secretly held feelings of lust for Charlie, that moment is shattered when his co-worker, Norman (Rhys Coiro), strides in and proceeds to rape Amy as well. Charlie fails to uphold any warped sense of chivalry that might have even remotely existed in him as he sits down dumbstruck, knowing that to intervene would expose him and his actions. This single moment highlights that beneath his Adonis-like physique, unflappable confidence, and even his intelligence is a coward, just like David and Amy. What makes this interpretation of Charlie more interesting is the role that this places Tom Heddon in. When Tom flies into a rage at the possibility that a local man with an intellectual disability named Jeremy Niles (Dominic Purcell) may have hurt his teenage daughter, Janice (Willa Holland), he assembles a posse comprised of his former football stars (i.e. Charlie and his roofing crew) to storm David and Amy's house and lynch the man. Although Charlie makes a cursory effort to extract Jeremy without hurting David and Amy, when Tom's indignation leads him to gun down the well-intentioned Sheriff John Burke (Laz Alonso) who tries to deescalate things, Charlie yields to Tom's mania and lets him dictate instructions like they were back on the field. Even now, Charlie remains something of a victim of this hot-tempered man and his own past, doing everything he can "for the coach". Like most of the best villains, Charlie ultimately sees himself as a hero, willing to do anything to uphold his idea of how life should be, even if it has been warped by past events.
Recommended for: Fans of a dark yet compelling psychological thriller that explores the undercurrent of horrible violence that follows the nigh-obsessive need in society for men to exemplify hollow concepts of masculinity in order to satisfy a false sense of self worth. Straw Dogs is often too obsessively faithful to its predecessor, and as such, is filled with brutal violence and disturbing content that is best suited to an objective audience that can see it as a commentary on violence, and not as a glorification of it.
The idea of "manhood" as having defined (yet inconsistent) characteristics is shared by both movies, but this film calls into question whether it comes from having financial security (e.g. David) or through skill and prowess, like with Charlie. This interpretation of Charlie represents the biggest difference between the two films, taking a more sympathetic attitude toward him, making him a "Heathcliff" kind of figure from "Wuthering Heights". Charlie approaches Amy as she and David have lunch in a bar with an effortlessly subtle swagger that only works for someone who knows that he is an alpha male. He refers to his ex as "Amy-cakes" and doesn't give more than a passing glance at her new husband sitting right beside her. Yet as his roofing colleagues observe, Charlie has a "silver tongue", and has already been contracted to fix the roof of her late father's barn, so David and Charlie will be forced to see a lot more of one another. Of course, Charlie is no dope; he is not only skilled in dialectic, but in his craft as well, and is even able to fleece David for a large chunk of change despite being let go by him later on. When he and his crew show up at the crack of dawn amid the sound of hard rock and hammering shingles, the groggy David tries to politely ask them to start later. Charlie seizes the opportunity to literally and figuratively "look down" on David as his soft employer clumsily clamors up the ladder to his level. With a rare talent for passive-aggressiveness, Charlie frequently reminds David how "things are done around here". Much more of Charlie's role in the community is hinted at in this movie than in the original, largely through a conversation David and Amy have, which also does much to explain the movie's title. David compares Charlie and men like him as "straw dogs", which were once held up in reverence only to be cast aside. He is referring to how they were once proud stars of the local football team under Tom Heddon, but discovered that they had no real purpose afterwards, so have been left to do work like roofing. But David's comparison to an obscure ancient Chinese practice in response to Amy's displeasure at these men ogling her as she goes jogging only reinforces that he also uses his education to make himself feel superior to others. This film makes it easier to identify just why Charlie and his crew are so acrimonious toward David, not just because David comes into town acting all high and mighty, but because Charlie's jealousy over Amy has passed on to his work buddies. They sense his subtle anger, and support their ally, even if through disturbing and terrible acts of spite and revenge. One of the strangest episodes of shock and violence comes when David discovers their cat strangled and hanging in the bedroom closet. It becomes more evident in this film that even though Charlie was not the culprit, surely one of his chums was, and did so in a twisted way to show sympathy for the pain he has felt by "punishing" David and Amy for seemingly causing it, as the incident ratchets up the tension between not just David and Charlie, but David and Amy.
There are moments where you might be tempted to see Charlie as someone only trying to educate David on the ways of their community, like when he offers him some "friendly advice" after walking out of a sermon. Yet Charlie still longs for his "glory days", and sees Amy as a part of that image of what his "best self" is, as he is constantly reminded of from a photo of the two of them--him in his letter jacket--from back when. This interpretation helps add some context to what remains one of the most controversial moments from Peckinpah's film--and arguably this one, too--when Charlie forces his way into Amy's house while David has been taken hunting by his crew, and then forces himself on his wife. And even when afterward it appears that there just may be some grain of truth in the idea that Amy still secretly held feelings of lust for Charlie, that moment is shattered when his co-worker, Norman (Rhys Coiro), strides in and proceeds to rape Amy as well. Charlie fails to uphold any warped sense of chivalry that might have even remotely existed in him as he sits down dumbstruck, knowing that to intervene would expose him and his actions. This single moment highlights that beneath his Adonis-like physique, unflappable confidence, and even his intelligence is a coward, just like David and Amy. What makes this interpretation of Charlie more interesting is the role that this places Tom Heddon in. When Tom flies into a rage at the possibility that a local man with an intellectual disability named Jeremy Niles (Dominic Purcell) may have hurt his teenage daughter, Janice (Willa Holland), he assembles a posse comprised of his former football stars (i.e. Charlie and his roofing crew) to storm David and Amy's house and lynch the man. Although Charlie makes a cursory effort to extract Jeremy without hurting David and Amy, when Tom's indignation leads him to gun down the well-intentioned Sheriff John Burke (Laz Alonso) who tries to deescalate things, Charlie yields to Tom's mania and lets him dictate instructions like they were back on the field. Even now, Charlie remains something of a victim of this hot-tempered man and his own past, doing everything he can "for the coach". Like most of the best villains, Charlie ultimately sees himself as a hero, willing to do anything to uphold his idea of how life should be, even if it has been warped by past events.
Recommended for: Fans of a dark yet compelling psychological thriller that explores the undercurrent of horrible violence that follows the nigh-obsessive need in society for men to exemplify hollow concepts of masculinity in order to satisfy a false sense of self worth. Straw Dogs is often too obsessively faithful to its predecessor, and as such, is filled with brutal violence and disturbing content that is best suited to an objective audience that can see it as a commentary on violence, and not as a glorification of it.