The fire/furor was further stoked when Lurie and Screen Gems decided to release a poster for this new Straw Dogs that - depending on your point of view - was either a rip-off or homage to the original 1971 poster that featured a close-up of Dustin Hoffman wearing shattered eyeglasses. Was the studio admitting defeat by declaring with the poster that this version is a copycat of Peckinpah's unable to stand on its own? With so much baggage already being carried by the production, the poster nearly became the straw that broke the camel's (or in this case, Dogs') back.
However, here's the thing: Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, as highly regarded as it still is, wasn't a perfect film. Far from it. While Dustin Hoffman and Susan George's characters were developed just enough to provide audiences with an insight into the dynamics of the couple's relationship, barely any time was spent setting up the film's colorful antagonists. Also, Peckinpah's direction of the prolonged rape scene is disturbingly misogynistic. Susan George's character, Amy, is seen to initially resist the attack, but then appears to give in to her rapist (her ex-boyfriend, Charlie). Amy gets what she deserves and down deep wants is the message that comes through across the screen when Charlie is attacking her sexually. It's only when another member of Charlie's gang immediately violates Amy that Peckinpah's rape scene transforms into a violent act clearly against Amy's will. Yet explaining the faults of the original film does not justify doing a remake. The subject matter and story have to be worthy of revisiting or what's the point? With Straw Dogs, the moral of the original tale is just as important, just as relevant today as when Peckinpah's film (which was based on Gordon Williams' novel) was released in the early 1970s. It is a story worth revisiting, and if changes needed to be made to make it more accessible to a contemporary audience, then so be it.
The similarities between the two films are greater than their differences. Both feature a young married couple named Amy and David Sumner. Both films have the couple journeying to the childhood home of Amy's, and both Davids go there for peace and quiet and to get some work done. Dustin Hoffman's David was a mathematician who needed to concentrate, while James Marsden's David has a sexier occupation as a Hollywood screenwriter working on a script about the Battle of Stalingrad. Susan George's Amy was a flighty little thing, jobless and seemingly without ambition. Kate Bosworth's Amy is an actress who met her husband when he wrote for the now-cancelled TV show she appeared on. We know she's not a brainiac, but she does have a profession and continues to educate herself (we know this from a scene in which she studies hard to figure out chess). Both Amys had more than their fair share of male admirers growing up, and both Amys have one male from their past who believes he's still the man she should be with instead of her wimpy husband.
In the 2011 version, the ex-boyfriend, Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard), has never moved on from the years he spent in high school as a stud football player. He lives off his past gridiron glory, surrounding himself with the gang he grew up with who still look to him as their leader. Now a construction worker, Charlie and his crew are hired by David to fix up the barn which was damaged in a hurricane.
David immediately gets off on the wrong foot with the locals in Blackwater, Mississippi by dressing 'Hollywood', driving a flashy $100,000 car, and throwing around his money as though he's got a key to Fort Knox. He tips outlandishly, can't change his own tire, and even walks out in the middle of a church service (which results in an angry Charlie confronting David, an atheist, about his rudeness and his religious beliefs). Every single action David takes illustrates how out of place he is and demonstrates his condescending attitude toward the locals. But what he's not, despite provocation, is aggressive. Amy chides him for allowing the guys to walk all over him and for his inability to confront problems. Yet, as we find out in the film's third act, even a pacifist can be pushed into taking a stand.
Lurie cast the film well, with Kate Bosworth delivering a sensitive, understated performance. Alexander Skarsgard (best known as 'Eric Northman' in HBO's sexy vampire series, True Blood) brings the exact right blend of friendliness and menace to the role of Charlie. Unlike the 1971 movie, it's easy to see why Amy and Charlie went together in school. We get that relationship in a way that was never sold to us in the original film.
James Marsden had incredibly huge shoes to fill taking over a role made famous by Dustin Hoffman, and while he's no Dustin Hoffman - and doesn't try to be - he is a believable David. You alternately like, despise, hate, and feel for this man who's been plopped into a world completely alien to him and expected to immediately adjust his behavior to fit his surroundings. And when he finally develops a pair of balls, you root for him to deliver better than he gets. Marsden handles it all terrifically - from his character's disdain for his surroundings to his love for his pretty wife and his distrust of anyone and everyone, to his ultimate transformation into full-on action hero mode. Hopefully audiences will allow Marsden's David to stand on his own and not constantly be forced into comparisons with his predecessor.
While Lurie's Straw Dogs at times seems to bend too far to include references to the original film, it is not a shot-by-shot remake nor does it even necessarily ultimately carry the same message. It is just as brutal (actually, even more so) and the tension builds in the same manner it did in Peckinpah's version as the locals push David further and further until he reaches the breaking point. Lurie's version allows the audience to form its own opinions where Peckinpah's film was straight-up black and white.
2011's Straw Dogs goes deeper with the characters, with even Charlie coming off initially as more of a sympathetic figure than he could ever have been viewed as in the 1971 film. Lurie's Straw Dogs forces us to look at ourselves, and what we see in the mirror's reflection might be just as disturbing as what Lurie's laid out on the screen.
GRADE: B
Straw Dogs was directed by Rod Lurie and is rated R for strong brutal violence including a sexual attack, menace, some sexual content, and pervasive language.
Theatrical Release: September 15, 2011
