Review Tuesday: Straw Dogs [2011]

 

STRAW DOGS

When a Hollywood couple heads home to the wife's roots, they don't get the welcome they expected. 

This was another selection by Mrs Bax0jayz. She saw that it got high marks and had an impressive cast, so why not? 

 

Actress Amy Sumner (Kate Bosworth) is headed to her familial home in the deep south with her writer husband David (James Marsden). What seemed like a warm welcome was more like mockery and sarcasm. Despite all that, David went and hired local carpenter and high school flame of Amy's, Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard) for repairs on barn. From there it just seems that David couldn't do anything right in the eyes of the locals as they conspire to wreck his marriage and life. 

 

This movie got really good ratings. At a glance there's good acting, great cast, it's very polished and generally well made. But when you start to think about certain aspects, some of it comes apart. For instance, one of the plotlines is around a local man who clearly has some developmental disability named Jeremy Niles (Dominic Purcell). The way they had this handsome dude just standing around staring off into space, I thought he was blind at first. That character would have been better cast with someone who looks more disabled, rather than someone who could've been in a Chippendale's act. Of course, this guy had gotten himself in trouble with a girl at some time in the past so the entire town keeps a close eye on him. The leader of the mob seems to be the Coach, played by James Woods. Of course, the Coach happens to have a fifteen year old daughter who seems to have some strange attraction to Niles.  Add the next plotline, Charlie has delusions that Amy still wants him even though each time he makes advances she shrugs him off or pushes him away. So Charile hatches a plan to get David out of the house long enough to rape Amy. I suppose this is Hollywood showing how rape-culture is just part of southern living.

 

The truly pivotal scene in the movie was when the boys were coming to work on the barn and Amy was all sweaty for her morning jog and they were driving directly behind her to take in the nice view. After she noticed that they were there, since she had on headphones, she storms home to her husband and orders him to do something about it. He's a Hollywood bookworm and THEY are truck full of testosterone machines. Going out to confront them would've been dumb. And David suggested that she might want to dress more conservatively when the workers are coming by. In a rage she storms off and undresses at a window, on purpose, for the workers to get a full view. Now, I am never one to say that a woman asked for any sort of violence, but she KNEW what type of loons these guys were and did this striptease for them? How did she NOT expect what would come next???  

At the Friday night local football game Niles has a rendezvous with the Coach's daughter. As the town folk go looking for him, Niles ends up getting hit by Amy and David in their car. Niles has a bad injury, so rather than drive him the 40 miles to the nearest hospital, they call an ambulance to pick them up AT THEIR HOME. The good old boys figure this out and head up there to kill the girl-toucher and the couple protecting him.That was when push came to shove and the brilliance of the city boy showed these yocals who truly is the top of the food chain and ended up killing them all. The bookworm Athenian defeated the brawn of the Spartans.

 

This film is a remake of a movie from the '70s that was based on a book. I guess there's no material out there that Hollywood needs to keep digging up the same bones? There were good points. Great cast. Kate Bosworth is ridiculously sexy in this movie and commands the screen when she's in frame. The bad, it's nearly two hours of Hollywood stereotypes. I am tempted to see the original film and the book is was based on to see how much of a slant was made in this story. And if this was real life, I am willing to bet the southern girl would've had to save her big-city husband's ass. 

 

All that aside, while I was watching it, I found the movie compelling, however predictable. You knew what was going to happen right from the first scene in town. You just needed to sit through two hours of build up before it got there. Still a good movie to watch. 

AMAZON

IMDB