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Dancing_P [ 7.5 ]
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Straw Dogs is probably one of the most misrepresented films I've seen. Coming from a director immediately associated with violence and featuring a plot that ''encourages'' vigilante justice (more about that later), it comes off as more of a classy Death Wish than anything. That's so far from the truth that my original reaction was not a positive one. Peckinpah initally appears to have such dubious morals that the movie itself seems uncomfortable and useless. David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) is a bookish American mathematician who moves to his wife Amy's (Susan George) hometown in rural England to work on a book. He hires some local hooligans to do some renovations on the house; most of them have obviously taken a fancy to his wife, but he lets it slip by... until their cat is found hung in the closet and David decides to take action. The first mistake I made was assuming that David was the good guy in here. He's not: in true Peckinpah fashion, there's no one to root for. David becomes the bad guy not because he does bad guy things but because he completely refuses to see that said bad guy things are happening. He sees all his problems like an attacking bear: act like it's not there and it'll go away. Peckinpah appeals to our basest voyeuristic desires by making a revenge movie where no one truly gets revenge and no one seems to deserve it; he's focusing on our desire to see violence for violence's sake and the cathartic effect it supposedly has on us. It even plays with the fascist notion of will and impulse over rational thought. It's a very polarizing film; I think it's both brilliant and full of shit simultaneously. Definitely one I need to revisit some time later.
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chapter11 [ 7.5 ]
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A terrifically-made and extremely perceptive thriller (character study? film philosophy?), Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" is clearly not misogynistic (although a disturbing rape scene, in which it is implied that the victim may have enjoyed or at least asked for it, does occur about midway); in fact, it's decidedly anti-male, or at least unflinching in presuming the animalistic nature of all men. We all have the capacity for the brutality, one-upsmanship, and swinging-dick posturing that these guys indulge in-- Peckinpah doesn't even let off the guy who should ostensibly be the protagonist, subtly insinuating that mild-mannered, emasculated David (Dustin Hoffman) was actually a bastard all along. So there are no good guys, just a whole bunch of bad guys. It's not pleasant moviemaking (it's like a cinematic enema) but it's brilliant nonetheless.
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| Weighted Rating | : 7.4 |
| No. Ratings | : 14 | |
| No. Reviews | : 2 | |
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