In an era of filmmaking defined by remakes, reinventing a classic is a no-brainer. It’s a certified box office knockout. But when it came to remaking ‘Straw Dogs,’ writer, director and producer Rod Lurie was motivated by more than just the promise of money. He had a different goal: Make it better.

Most remakes are strict genre films, with comedy, horror and action as the reigning kings. Thrillers are remade somewhat frequently, but only if they can be marketed and sold like a horror or action film, which have large built-in audiences. ‘Straw Dogs’ is a thriller, but it’s closer to drama than action or horror, and it’s by no means an easy sell.

Nobody asked Lurie to make this movie.

Every bit as unsettling as Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 original, Lurie’s pure thriller is a sly, chilling commentary on masculinity that’s as smart as it is brutal. The violence and general barbarism that made the original ‘Straw Dogs’ a classic is not lost on Lurie’s remake, but wielded as a storytelling device that makes this version even more complex.

Hollywood screenwriter David Sumner (James Marsden) and his wife, Amy (Kate Bosworth), drive from glitzy Los Angeles to Blackwater, Miss., Amy’s ruthlessly redneck hometown, so that he can finish a script while they work on repairing the roof of Amy’s father’s old barn. The alpha male locals greet Amy with great enthusiasm, but whisper to one another about David, who dresses and talks like someone that surely doesn’t belong. To fix the roof, David procures the services of Charlie Venner (Alexander Skarsgård), a local football hero who happened to date Amy back in high school.

Charlie and his fellow workers, who shamelessly regard him as their leader, immediately get to work — both on the roof and getting under David’s skin. David regards Charlie as his foe and tensions sizzle as David waits for Charlie to make the inevitable first move. With former football coach Tom Heddon (James Woods), a volatile drunk, on Charlie’s side, finding an excuse to explode isn’t all that difficult. When the time finally comes for David to man up and fight back, he has to summon every measure of willpower to overcome an onslaught of crazed Blackwater bullies.

Lurie cultivates the tension in such a way that one cannot help but feel breathless for long stretches that might have felt forgettable or plain under a different filmmaker’s guise. It is hard to fashion a thriller with slow-burning tension that still manages to shock. But Lurie accomplishes that rare feat with perfectly placed sequences of sly terror, including a graphic rape scene. While the controversial rape scene in Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ had strong misogynist undertones, Lurie strips away those implications and still manages to make the scene equally devastating.

Lurie is too intelligent and ambitious a filmmaker to simply retrace Peckinpah’s steps. In transposing the setting to the Deep South, Lurie expertly illuminates the sociocultural rift that instigates the bloodletting. Using high school football as the embodiment of a small city’s hopes and dreams, Lurie adds more weight to the meaning of the term ‘straw dogs,’ injecting it with greater importance than it did in the original. Lurie doesn’t merely use the theme of territorial impulse as a crutch like Peckinpah. He boldly highlights man’s need to defend his property, no matter what the circumstance.

Marsden and Bosworth are terrific in the meatiest roles of their respective careers, but Alexander Skarsgård thoroughly steals the show as Charlie, the golden boy turned sour by dashed dreams. Of all the elements in ‘Straw Dogs,’ Skarsgård’s Charlie is the clearest improvement. He boasts a more interesting backstory and is, at times, hard to root against.

Take any other element of the film, and these two ‘Dogs’ would be locked in a pretty fair fight.

smlittma@syr.edu

 

Published on September 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm