Is anyone shocked Hollywood remade the 1971 Sam Peckinpah classic Straw Dogs?
Heck, if they’re plotting a new version of Dirty Dancing, anything is fair game.
But Straw Dogs isn’t so easy to duplicate. The original, starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George as a young couple tormented by British thugs, explored screen violence in ways that made previous exploitation films seem tame. Not only did Hoffman find his inner Paul Kersey, but George’s performance during the film’s critical rape sequence shocked many viewers. George’s character seemed to enjoy portions of the forced sexual encounter, something rarely seen in movies then … or now.
Will the minds behind the new Straw Dogs replicate those conflicting emotions? Dare they even try?
The new version, from liberal filmmaker Rod Lurie of Commander-in-Chief fame, isn’t being screened for Denver-based film critics like myself. That likely means most movie scribes won’t see it until its Sept. 16 release.
The original Dogs hit theaters long before Quentin Tarantino re-set the bar on-screen violence with every new film. Is it possible to shock modern audiences, and will Straw Dogs give it that old college try?
Note: The Hoffman original just came out on Blu-ray. And while the disk lacks the usual array of extras it’s still a fine investment.
Rod Lurie is a liberal, huh? Maybe that explains why the trailer gives the impression the original British louts have been replaced by Hollywood’s inexhaustible supply of gruesome rednecks.
Remember how badly the original bombed? Director Sam Peckinpah got in another “controversial” moment, along with Susan George enjoying rape until the rape turned anal. I’m thinking of the last fadeout of Hoffman’s militantly-non-violent character slowly breaking into a sly smirk over having found the guts to go Charles Bronson.
Maybe this queasy-making ambivalence is why the show tanked. The “you know you like it” meme evokes torture porn more than righteous retribution.
Straw Dogs made me physically ill; it was torture porn, pure and simple. About all you can say for it was that it was a particularly sophisticated for its ilk, because of the intense humiliation it put the Dustin Hoffman character through.
My wife and I walked out of the original because of the violence. By today’s standards it now seems tame.
“Is it possible to shock modern audiences, and will Straw Dogs give it that old college try?”
I don’t know, but filmmakers are certainly trying. Just look at the whole burgeoning torture porn subgenre (I know I’m not the first commenter to mention that). I just watched Eden Lake yesterday, and it’s hard not to see the connections to the original Straw Dogs. In that film, torture becomes an end in itself (Michael Fassbender getting his tongue cut up, a little boy murdered with a burning tire, etc.), all of which turned my stomach. (Had I known, I wouldn’t have watched it. Stupid me.)
The trouble is, what’s the next step in shocking audiences? Peckinpah was at least a fantastic filmmaker (The Wild Bunch was brutally violent, but still an excellent film). Some of these new writers and directors seem to want nothing more than to shock and disturb audiences, even to the point of neglecting decent plot progression and character development.
Soon, I’d say that we’ll see a film that is all torture, blood, and brutality, with no attempt to even introduce a coherent plot or any real charaters, where the brutality is the only thing that matters. (Hey, maybe it’s already been done and I just don’t know about it.)
Straw Dogs is brilliant. It is a parable about appeasement. Hoffman spends the entire film trying to appease these thugs, being “nice” to them, and only inviting more trouble for his efforts. At the end, the consequences of this appeasement are force and violence. Had Hoffman been more forceful in the beginning, the thugs might have respected him more and the big catastrophe may have been avoided. But in the end, the violence is necessary – by his own making – to protect his home.
His weaknesses as a man also drive his wife away, into a clear attraction to one of the thugs, a former boyfriend of hers. The controversial moment is CLEARLY rape, no doubt about it, but this is an ex-boyfriend that she does have an attraction to, particularly since she’s been so disgusted with her weak husband, so her “getting into” parts of the experience is a complicated but truthful response for the character. Rape? Absolutely, but complicated and shaded… and more real than just black and white. I’m sure many real life rapes among friends and ex boyfriends are similar to this, with similar shading and nuance, but it’s still rape. At the very least, it’s certainly possible that somebody could initially be against sex outside of their marriage, but give in later. Straw Dogs is the only film I’ve ever seen that has the courage to plumb such “realistic” ground with the subject of sexual assault.
I have no idea where the “torture porn” comments come from. I hate “torture porn”, but Straw Dogs isn’t it. Yes, the end of the rape scene turns very disturbing, but that fits with the character and is a way for the film to turn an ambiguous situation into an unequivocal violation that demands revenge. No longer is this woman a possible participant in adultery at some level, now she has been very clearly and unwillingly violated. That sets the stage for what comes later, and is just good screenwriting.
The rest of the violence is quite tame by today’s standards – it just comes off as “shocking” in the context of the film because this weak man finally has to turn to the only thing left to save his home – violence… violence he created through his weakness. But it’s all motivated, none of it is particularly gruesome, and it is very far from torture porn. Watch it again and tell me if it is anything like Saw or Hostel – films full of closeups of slow mutilations and sadism for its own sake. There is absolutely nothing like this in Straw Dogs.
Finally, the “thugs” are great bad guys, because they are real as well. The situation feels horrible, but genuine, and these guys are bad, but not over-the-top. It’s mostly a situation that has grown out of hand and is made explosive by a drunken night and a terrible, unrelated(but set up in the script) crime. Making the explosive violence at the end of this film seem natural and real, and the characters seem like real people that just got involved in a situation that spirals out of control, is a triumph that I can pretty much guarantee the Lurie version will not be able to duplicate. The new version will undoubtedly feature cartoony rednecks raging against some sensitive liberal.
No, you’re right David, Straw Dogs, while violent and controversial, isn’t torture porn. I wasn’t trying to make that point, but just pointing out how one contemporary film in particular, which I think fits into this gross subgenre, may well draw influence from SD (both take place in England, too!).
We make a mistake if we lump SD in with the worst of Roth and Wan and Aja (and others). That said, I completely understand why people don’t like Straw Dogs. Good cinema or not, it pushes violence very far, too far for most polite audiences.
Torture porn. Rape. Yes. Same thing. The second act of it is absolutely so.
The story is an incredible one, no doubt. But Peckinpah’s imagining of the story (which was quite different than the novel, anyway) was less than great, IMO. Yes, there was depth and artistic value in it. But I think those are the reasons why it failed to wholly capture audiences. Now, I doubt Lurie’s version will have the same beautiful depth to it, but I’m positive it will capture audiences. I can’t fault it for being redone. I may not be lining up for tickets, but I will be cheering it on, in principle.
I’ll be curious to see what this new generation does with Straw Dogs. The violence in the first, indeed, was disturbing for its time but as another poster pointed out – tame by today’s standards.
And I never bought Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of “out-of-control”. Maybe James Marsden can pull it off. Not to say Marsden is a better actor than Hoffman – no way. But I think he might be more believable going from mild-mannered to homicidal.
Never saw it. I was occupied lifting straw bales.
I suspect Lurie’s remake of Peckinpah, with venue change from Cornwall in England to the cornhole American South, will presents its violent antagonists as nascent Perry voters and Tea Party types.