STRAW DOGS (Rod Lurie). 110 minutes. Opens Friday (September 16). See listing. Rating: NN
Straw Dogs is yet another remake of a far better movie. Unlike Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 tense and shocking exploration of the link between violence and masculinity, it’s a clumsy suspenser that drags out its buildup and provides its leads with little in the way of character.
Mild-mannered screenwriter David Sumner (James Marsden) and his actor wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) go to her backwater Mississippi hometown so he can work on a script. A quartet of local good old boys headed by Amy’s ex-boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård) show up to fix the barn roof, then stick around to subtly terrorize the couple until matters escalate to a pitched battle.
Can David man up enough to fight back? In the original, Dustin Hoffman made David intelligent and intense, all brain and no body. We can believe it when he goes a little mad for the climax. Marsden’s David is average brain, no backbone, and he enters the finale with a cheery smile. The original’s Amy (Susan George) was sexually dissatisfied and still attracted to her ex. Bosworth is with David all the way.
In place of sexual tension, writer/director Rod Lurie offers football games as an explanation for redneck violence. It’s not convincing. Neither is the climactic deployment of a bear trap. At an advance screening, it got the biggest laugh in the movie.
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