Straw Dogs (2011)

From IMDB…

L.A. screenwriter David Sumner relocates with his wife to her hometown in the deep South. There, while tensions build between them, a brewing conflict with locals becomes a threat to them both.

My Thoughts

This movie is a remake of a 1971 movie of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman. The 1971 movie was based on a novel by Gordon Williams called The Siege of Trencher’s Farm. Let me first start off by saying that I didn’t expect this to be a good movie. I didn’t want to pay $7 to see what I expected to be a film trying to make money off the success of the original. But I went anyways because apparently that’s what friends do. What can I say except friendship is overrated.

Terrible, terrible, horrible, terrible, terrible movie all the way around. As a suspense and thriller movie it failed terribly and horribly. There was no suspense or thrills — and that’s coming from ME the girl who gets spooked when the scary music starts to play. Nothing happened for an hour and a half and it was literally a snoozefest until the last twenty minutes.

You cast me in another bad movie and I shoot

I don’t particularly care for Kate Bosworth as an actress. I first met her in the short-lived TV show Young Americans and since then she hasn’t impressed me with her acting skills. She plays Amy Sumner, wife of David, and hometown darling of Blackwater, Mississippi, a place she left at a young age to pursue acting. Her ex-boyfriend, Charlie Venner, played by Alexander Skarsgard is working with his crew to replace the roof on Amy’s deceased father’s house. She and David have come to Mississippi to fix up then sell the house so they can return to L.A.

Please don't judge me by this movie. I'm Cyclops!

James Marsden plays David Sumner, the hotshot L.A. screenwriter who hopes to be able to get some writing done here in the Middle of Nowhere, Mississippi. The locals don’t like outsiders and they certainly don’t like rich outsiders. Marsden plays the bumbling, geeky rich-guy well enough I suppose but doesn’t add anything special to the movie.

Warning: This isn’t a date movie. DO NOT take your girlfriend to go see this movie. There is a rape scene and it’s not pretty. If anything, it serves as a lesson of exactly what NOT to do if you are the victim of a sexual attack.

Amy, don't be alarmed, but when the boys get here I'm going to kill them for no reason at all. You in?

The point of the movie is that there is no point. It’s about a guy who at first doesn’t care that his wife is being ogled by her ex-boyfriend and his group of friends. It’s then about a guy who realizes oh my god yes I should stand up for my wife so you know what the next time they come around here I’m going to kill them all. End of story.

Is there such a thing as a good remake? I’m probably not the best judge of that, but from my perspective it seems likely that a remake of a classic is inevitably going to disappoint. It is very difficult to live up to expectations and even more difficult to surpass those expectations. Whatever the appeal of the first movie was, there was none of it here. The movie that I watched was a celebration of violence. There was no debate of morals or justice being served. It was exactly what it was and no thinking required.

After the movie ended, I declared it was the most terrible movie I had ever seen in my life and I still can’t think of a worse movie. From what I gather, the original Straw Dogs movie made 40 years earlier was a question of morality and had you thinking once the movie was over. There is no thinking with this movie and it left me with a sense of repulsion and a bad taste in my mouth. I do not recommend Straw Dogs to anyone.