Straw Dogs - Criterion Collection

Rating:
Summary: Straw Dogs
Review: This film is without doubt one of the darkest most horrific films in the american mainstream market. While younger filmakers such as Tarantino, etc., go for the violence from the first, Peckinpah builds and builds until all the characters explode in one of the grisliest climaxes in film. Hoffman is perfect. For all you geeks out there who fantasize about actualizng your darkest revenge fantasies, RENT THIS MOVIE. But be warned, do not watch this movie with your girlfriend or wife. The film was slightly censored so some of the cuts are choppy and the ending has some cheaper moments, but all in all a great and very thoughful look into brutality.

Rating:
Summary: Too drawn out, but I can see why it's a classic.
Review: I know that, for it's time, this was one shocking movie.And I dont judge by todays standards (Not that there are many left..).
I think it's so annoying that Hoffman's character is such a pussy, and even after so much has been done to push him, he still tries to keep his cool! His role blank and underplayed... but then again, isn't that you end up screaming at the T.V. screen for him to do something about the lynch mob?!!! Good play. On the whole, it's not that bad, and I prefer Older movies to anything that's come out since the 90's. [...] It's like he only had to give her a good talking to to get her consent.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it.
Review: All you reviewers crying "misogynist" need to chill out. Don't forget that the first rapist had a previous intimate relationship with Amy. Still a rape? Absolutely! Does that explain a bit about her reaction? Most certainly it does. Peckinpah was not trying to bend his audience's morality in the direction of sexual violence. I really don't think so. This film is about an introverted, unassertive wussy who is married to an extroverted, smoking hot young woman. Throw in some cultural displacement and some local jerkwads who want a piece of said young woman and you've got acres of room for character development.

The naysayers themselves have proven with thier lengthy reviews that this film is important. They have obviously given quite a bit of thought to this work.

Rating:
Summary: DUSTIN RULES!!!!
Review: this movie is great! you must watch it with your full attention from beginning to end and you will be blown out of your seat and will doo doo your pants because it is that good.

Rating:
Summary: interesting but violent and controversial
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" generated much controversey when it was released due to the gratuitious violence and a rape scene and got an X rating in England based on this. At one time, it was banned because it appears that the woman being raped is actually enjoyng being raped.

The film is about a couple on vacation in the Cornwall region of England. They are continually harassed by the people of the town. When the 'village idiot' accidentaly kills a woman the couple tries to protect him from a lynch mob.

The film has many scenes that will be unsettling to some viewers, but with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role, it will appeal to those interested in his films. It contains some good acting and beautiful scenery of the Cornish countryside.

The DVD is a two disc set with many special features.

Disc one contains the film with optional audio commentary by scholar, Stephen Prince and an optional isolated music and sound effects track.

Disc two contains theatrical trailers and TV spots, a documentary about the director titled: "Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron," Behind the scenes footage, films of Dustin Hoffman on the set, Interviews with producer Daniel Melnick and actress Susan George, and finally transcripts Peckinpah's responses to reviews and letters from film critics and viewers.

This DVD went out of print beginning January 1 2004 but at the time of this review, the price for secondhand copies remains low. The price is bound to go up as out of print Criterion DVD's almost always do.

Rating:
Summary: None of you are getting it...
Review: Reading the reviews of this film, it is obvious that, hate it or love it, people just do not get it. They buy into the simplistic story of a pacifist pushed to the limit by thugs forcing themselves on his home and wife. In other words, through a violent rite of passage he becomes a real man. Now, some people hate the film for this, others applaud it. But it's just wrong, folks. The problem, I believe, is that this film has been around for thirty years and has been so thoroughly misunderstood for that time that people go into viewing it with the preconceived notion of the story outlined above, and, all due respect to Sam Peckinpah, if you aren't paying close attention to the nuances you will come out of it with the same idea. But, as I said a moment ago, this is not the story, and the nuances are what make this film brilliant, not the "rape good, feminist bad, so long as the nerd wins" story that does not exist.
David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) is the bad guy of this film. He is egotistical, overly-intellectual, condescending, rude, and emotionally cold to all of humanity and above all his wife. Not only that, but he is a pathologically repressed time bomb, refusing to acknowledge his considerable flaws until they explode at the end of the film (the film is in fact a nightmare vision of such a pathological personality on the brink of collapse).
Amy, his long-suffering wife, is mostly interpreted as Peckinpah's misogynist fantasy of a sex kitten who asks to be raped and enjoys it, while behaving as a bitch towards her nebbish husband. This is wrong, and I don't know what film people have been watching 'cause I do not see that at all. Amy's seemingly petty digs at David (changing his equations, defacing his chalkboard, etc.) are all preceded by some meanness on his part, such as abusing her cat or cutting her down intellectually at every opportunity ("Hey, you're not so dumb," and "I love you, Amy, but I want you to leave me alone"). The film centers on her increasing suffering at being around an emotionally distant and cold husband and the local hooligans.
Which brings me to the most misunderstood part: the rape. She does not ask for this rape, as many think. She does not flirt with the workmen; when she sees them leering at her torn stockings she reacts with disgust and anger; even her brief flashing is hardly inviting...her look is one of cold anger, not enticing sexuality. For the majority of the rape she is clearly not enjoying it...if you watch the montage carefully, it not only highlights her emotional suffering above all but also her association of her husband with her rapist, further underscoring the alienation between them, the similarities between David and the surface "villains," and her psychological torment. The brief sexual response she offers is ambiguous, I admit, but given its context it is a perplexing reaction, sort of the result of her anguish, rather than an indicator that she was digging what was happening.
Finally we have the end, what so many people see as David's "rite of passage" to manhood by beating up the gang of thugs. He is still in a corner here; his grand moral principle of taking responsibility for Henry Niles is undercut when he cannot give any reason for such a responsibility; and watch the camera angle when he proclaims that he will not allow violence against the house: it is from an extremely high, steep angle, visually undermining his moral declaration. This is because it is an empty statement; he identifies with the strongly-built, "solid" house and does not want it breached because, in his mind, it is his own psyche under attack. He has done so well at shielding himself from the world, distancing himself from all humanity (that is why they left the States) that he will use any means necessary to keep intruders out.
In the end, of course, the house is violated, his wife is finally completely alienated (note how, when she tries to aid the intruders, he treats her in the same brutal manner that Charlie, the rapist, did), and the world he knew has been destroyed. This is actually an extremely meloncholy and hopeless film; neither David nor Amy can hope to go back to their old lives. David's abandoning of her to drive Niles back is indictive of this, and on the car ride he admits he is lost himself.
I hope this is helpful in untangling, as Danny DeVito in "Death to Smoochy" would call it, "this web of sh*t." The movie does not glorify violence; rather, it shows it as the horrific result of one man's emotional detachment and pathological repression of every difficulty in his life. It is a tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Straw Dogs
Review: Sam Peckinpah's controversial film, "Straw Dogs" is a brilliant psychological insight into one's will against violence and potential need for it.

Dustin Hoffman is, as usual, compelling as David Sumners, meek mathematician, who just got married to his beautiful young bride. They are moving to her house in rural England where a group of men are working on her garage. However, they begin to harass her and David, increasingly intensifying their efforts as they realize that David will do nothing about it. However, David cannot take much more, and is finding it harder and harder to control his primal emotions that we all have. What Peckinpah is asking is, is violence a necessity in one's life? Is violence essential to deal with the external conflicts brought on by others? In this case, yes. Violence can only be answered by violence in David's scenario.

While not for the easily disturbed or squeamish, "Straw Dogs" is a film any serious moviegoer should see and praise for it's never lessening vitality and brilliance.

Rating:
Summary: Peckinpah Was Capable of So Much Better
Review: This movie represents much of the things that made Peckinpah such a conflicted director. The theme of the movie, for me, had nothing to do with the turning of a worm, but was all about Peckinpah's own love for violence as a way of giving the finger to everyone he thought was a lackey or conventional or just not macho enough.

Peckinpah made, in my opinion, one classic movie, The Wild Bunch. There was violence, but this was overshadowed by the development of character and the sadness of age and changing times. Cable Hogue and Ride the High Country are both, in my opinion, very good, and in both Peckinpah showed self-discipline. But Straw Dogs, for me, is just violence to make a point that somewhere in Peckinpah's psyche it seemed important to make. He liked to push the envelope, as the cliche has it, and if people got a few paper cuts on their tongues, so much the better.

The casting also is a problem for me. Dustin Hoffman might be a very good actor, but he was sure lucky that he made The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy. He hit the moment in the late Sixties when pretty-boy heros were fast going out of fashion and the anti-hero was coming in. I'm convinced that if Hoffman had emerged in the Fifties or the Eighties, he would have remained an outstanding but unsung character actor. For me, it is unbelievable that Susan George would ever have considered him mating material. When this movie was made, Hoffman was big stuff in Hollywood and he and Peckinpah were probably delighted to get each other.

Rating:
Summary: Complex Peckinpah Film
Review: Despite it's reputation for being gratuitously violent, "Straw Dogs" isn't really. The film, until it's climax, forbodes violence which in many ways is more chilling than the act of violence itself. The film concerns itself with a pacifist mathematician, David Sumner(Dustin Hoffman) who moves with his youngish British wife, Amy(Susan George)to the Cornish village from where Amy was reared. Sumner is met with immediate resentment by a segment of the town's populace particularly from a group of laborers who Sumner has hired to fix up his cottage. In the meantime, it is apparent that the marriage between the Sumner's is somewhat rocky and not without tension of it's own. This lethal mix has all the earmarks of a combustible explosion and does it ever. The more popular reading of this film is that when the most passive of men are confronted with a violation against themselves or their property they will react in kind to protect themselves. However, on the film's commentary track, film scholar Stephen Prince has a different interpretation for Sumner's behaviour. This is one of the better scholastic commentarys I've heard so anybody who has already seen "Straw Dogs" would be advised to play the DVD with it on. As for the performances, Hoffman is excellent as Sumner but the real revelation here is Susan George as the woman-child Amy. Prince in his commentary picks up on the complexity of George's performance that I had not picked up on in my initial viewings of this film. The Criterion package also includes a documentary about Peckinpah that's semi-interesting but contains little or no documentary footage.