Ever since Deliverance, Hollywood has had no problem with treating the agrarian Confederacy as a cultural slag heap. Rural Southerners are rarely treated with kindness on celluloid, and this Straw Dogs remake is no different. The yokels here are xenophobic, malicious, intolerant, savage, depraved; if I lived in the bayou or a cotton farm I don’t think I’d ever go to the movies.
“Straw dogs” is a reference to ceremonial Chinese creations revered during service, but tossed aside and trampled afterwards. It is actually a much more apt metaphor for high school football crazed Americana, where kids become heroes at young ages and are quickly forgotten once their playing careers have ended, than in Cornwall, England (home of the original). Speaking of high school football, this Straw Dogs is the first film I’ve ever seen that equated American football violence with gang rape. That’s a helluva statement.
It really is a shame this film isn’t better because it has a lot going for it. Straw Dogs is a film in which much happens without explanation. When Amy (Kate Bosworth) gets pissed at David’s (James Marsden) unsupportive response to her complaints, she deliberately stripteases in full eye view of her local tormentors. (Sorry, nothing to see here, just teasing) There’s obviously more here than the script leads on; women don’t just turn exhibitionist out of spite. I liked that about Dogs.
Straw Dogs sticks almost painfully to the original script –hot girl returns to her backwater (the town here is literally named “Blackwater”) childhood stomping grounds, with milquetoast beau in tow, only to find the locals treating the new hubby like an infection. He sloughs it off until finally pushed too far. It’s moody and then suddenly violent, much like the original. Where Straw strays stridently (or not so stridently; I just like the alliteration) from the 1971 version is in some subtle but very important ways. For one thing, the husband/intruder in question is no longer a math prof, but a Hollywood screenwriter. What vanity came up with that? And are screenwriters naturally at odds with Southern rednecks? Bet you guys loved the ending. A bigger difference is that Amy doesn’t want any part of the locals, even on some internal level. This is very important because in essence, Straw Dogs has the same flaw as most horror films, “why don’t you just leave?”
The leads are wrong here; Kate Bosworth doesn’t play the “I want you to want me … but only from afar” role very well, and while I’m excited to see James Marsden take on a more complicated persona than his usual, he still comes off as too nice a guy. I imagine Marsden, with his chiseled jaw and glow-in-the-dark smile, going into remote areas of yak-herding Tibet where he’s never been and still ending up drinking beers with the Dalai Lama’s posse before the day ends. Dustin Hoffman? Yeah, I could see wanting to punch him in the face. Constantly.
Oh, and there was no reason to make another Straw Dogs. You know that, right?
Rated R, 110 Minutes
D: Rod Lurie
W: Rod Lurie
Genre: Unnecessary remake
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Screenwriters.
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Southerners.
