Review: Straw Dogs (2011)

Hollywood screenwriter James Marsden and his hot wife Kate Bosworth are heading back to her backwoods Mississippi hometown, so that the former can spend some time working on a new script. They’re having Bosworth’s family home renovated, and hires a crew that includes Bosworth’s ex, Alexander Skarsgaard. Bosworth is annoyed by the crew’s crude behaviour (and the lack of work seemingly being done by them), whilst pacifist, non-religious city guy Marsden rubs the locals the wrong way. And then the handymen invite Marsden on a hunting trip, leaving Bosworth home alone and vulnerable. Eventually Marsden realises that his timid, pacifist ways just aren’t gonna work in this redneck town, and he needs to resort to means he would never previously have even thought of. Dominic Purcell plays an intellectually disabled local man who is a town outcast, James Woods is the embittered local football coach, and Willa Holland is his slutty daughter who chooses the wrong guy to flirt with.

I was not a fan of the 1971 Sam Peckinpah original, to be honest. There were a few moments of intelligence, but the subject matter was unappealing, it was slow-moving, contained uninteresting characters and performances, and Peckinpah’s slow-mo violence was pretentious and inorganic to the rest of the film. I also felt like it was a backwoods American story transplanted rather uncomfortably to the UK. Funnily enough, in this 2011 remake, Rod Lurie (“The Contender”) brings the story to backwoods America. Unfortunately, it’s just about the only thing it does right, as he even screws up most of the things that did work in the original. It’s pretty faithful to the original on a superficial level, but there’s absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever, and that ambiguity was the original film’s calling card, really. It made the film unappealing to me, but nonetheless was the most memorable thing. To strip that and make Bosworth more of a victim is to render the film somewhat bland and boring.

Part of the problem is that the casting throws things off immediately. Dustin Hoffman was overrated in the original, but James Marsden is even worse. He’s a nice enough guy it seems, but he makes ‘nice’ completely boring and colourless. He’s also an underwear catalogue’s idea of a geek (his character’s profession is one of the few changes in the script), and a guy who has been in four superhero movies is meant to convince as a pacifist nerd? Really? I don’t think so. Kate Bosworth, meanwhile, is completely miscast. She might remind you of Susan George at times, but not in a flattering way. She’s more charismatic than Marsden, but if ever there was a role for Reese Witherspoon, this would’ve been it. Bosworth simply hasn’t got it in her to play any kind of complexity, especially considering the script has removed much of the complexity to begin with. Witherspoon might’ve been able to compensate where Bosworth is incapable of it. Neither the character nor performance is trashy enough to make it work. Even worse is Aussie actor Dominic Purcell in the David Warner role of the quiet-natured town ‘idiot’. Playing a socially awkward, shy, but potentially dangerous and deviant sex offender, Purcell is all wrong. He’s a big, brutish-looking bloke, and is like a bull in a china shop. He simply isn’t believable in a role that probably should’ve gone to Lukas Haas, Paul Dano, or Shawn Ashmore. Purcell simply has no fragility to him and too much intimidation by his sheer physical presence. Perhaps the most disappointing performance, however, comes from the normally electric James Woods. This is his second time playing a backwoods nasty, after his Oscar-nominated turn as the KKK’s answer to Foghorn Leghorn in “Ghosts of Mississippi”. He’s simply no good at playing these kinds of hateful backwoods people, far too hammy and silly. Completely miscast, he might just be too smart to play this dumb, and it’s the kind of role that really ought to have gone to R. Lee Ermey, Michael Rooker, or Bruce McGill. It’s probably the worst performance of his entire career, actually.

The infamous ‘rape’ scene is really what kills this film. Like I said, I’m not an admirer of the original, but that rape scene provided the film with at least something interesting to debate or ponder because it was slightly ambiguous. I wouldn’t say it was as hugely ambiguous as many would lead you to think, but even so, in this remake, the scene only has about 40% of the ambiguity in the original. Considering the meaning of the word ambiguous, that means here it’s next to nothing at all (Some argue that Bosworth kisses back, but I think that’s extremely difficult to discern). Apparently this was a deliberate change by Lurie, which begs the question why make the damn film at all? Truth be told, the scene is just as irrelevant here as it was in the original if you actually give any thought to it *** SPOILER ALERT *** I never understood the point in either version of the wife never telling the husband about it. Was she ashamed? Perhaps, but it still doesn’t seem necessary. Her keeping quiet makes the rape entirely irrelevant to the story as a result. It would work just as well without it, because the story isn’t about that one scene, despite my frustrations about the change this remake makes to the scene, but if you’re gonna remake the film, why neuter it? The scene was never going to work here, because writer-director Lurie has botched the Kate Bosworth character. By making her a more modern, and smarter woman (who takes umbrage at the suggestion that dressing promiscuously means she’s asking for it. Rightfully so, but...not in this film) fucks the whole film up. I simply didn’t believe she’d behave the way she does at certain points in the film because of the way she behaves the majority of the rest of the time. *** END SPOILER ***

I also took issue with the film’s action finale. It didn’t work in the original, and thanks to the terrible lighting (in an otherwise good-looking film prior to this), you can’t see a damn thing here. I will say, however, that Marsden is a much more convincing third act arse-kicker than Dustin Hoffman, who never sold the transition at all. The majority of the film is a bust, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely worthless. The pacing, for instance, is far better than in the original. The scenery and hick atmosphere are also really impressive throughout. I also think Alexander Skarsgaard makes for a terrific, charismatic bad guy, the film’s one good performance. I also really like the film’s backwoods “Friday Night Lights” vibe. The idea of a town full of no-hoper football losers pent up on testosterone, firearms, alcohol, and little else is scary and has promise. Thematically, then, it’s more interesting than the original was in some ways.

This is an uncharacteristically uninteresting film from Lurie. Although largely faithful to the original, it seems that Lurie either didn’t understand the point of it, or whatever he was trying for here in difference to the original, he hasn’t really succeeded in pulling it off. In taking away most (if not all) of the ambiguity, he has kept the bare bones of the plot but turned it into a straightforward rape/revenge film. Why would the director of “The Contender” care to make such lesser output?

Rating: C