Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film, Straw Dogs, is unarguably a classic. No matter your opinion of the film, it has certainly stayed in the cultural consciousness for the last forty years. Peckinpah's film makes the viewer feel quite dirty, especially during a prolonged (and questionable) rape scene. It's been called misogynistic and even facistic by respected critics like Pauline Kael. So what does this weekend's remake do to bring the story to a new generation of viewers?
Not a whole lot. While it retains the overall plot and similar characters, director Rod Lurie shifts the action to the American South for a broad portrait of American life. Painting in such broad strokes, Lurie turns all the characters into stereotypes. Liberals are brainy and rednecks like beer and football, that sort of thing. Admittedly, some of that was in the previous film, but by shifting it to American rednecks, it feels like a very clumsy commentary.
The overall plot is slightly changed to adapt to the new setting. Characters are changed from uncles to football coaches, that sort of thing. For the most part it's the same story though: an intellectual and his wife move to the country so he can work on a screenplay. Soon, they are having uncomfortable dealings with the local population, reaching a night of incredible violence.
Whereas Peckinpah makes the violence that mild-mannered Dustin Hoffman unleashes incredibly disgusting, brutal, and hard to watch, Lurie chooses a sensationalistic approach. Although many of the shots are ripped of completely from the original, the tone is very different. People in the audience cheered as mild-mannered James Marsden unleashed the same violence on his attackers. Instead of a film using violence as a statement of the beast in all men, this film simply uses it for excitement. While it is slightly cathartic, it's nowhere near as powerful as it should be.
I was happy for the excitement when it came, however. This film is so horribly paced that when I looked around the theater I could see the bored expressions on almost every person in the audience's face. There's a good hour and a half where almost nothing occurs before picking up the pace. Some of it is necessary for setup, but the majority of scenes feel extraneous. These scenes almost always have to do with the schism between red states and blue states and none of it goes anywhere.
James Woods stole the show as a drunken coach with a short fuse. I couldn't decide what to feel about the other performances. All the characters seemed both one dimensional and unlikable (even the protagonists), but I couldn't decide whether that was due to a shoddy script or weak performances. I'll give the actors the benefit of the doubt and say they did the best they could with what was available.
This film was one of the biggest disappointments of the year, weakening the name of the original film. However, in a year this film will have been forgotten while Peckinpah's will continue to live on in infamy.
(A final note: they changed David Sumner from mathematician into a screenwriter who is writing about Stalingrad. Blatant metaphor anyone?)
1.5 out of 5
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