Modern remake from Sam Peckinpah's 1971 controversial shocker in which Dustin Hoffman, who starred in , and famously disliked, the original film, gave filmmaker Rod Lurie his blessing . Released i almost 40 years to the day of the original 1971 version, which came out November 3 1971 . It deals with L.A. screen writer David Sumner (James Marsden) relocates with his wife (Kate Bosworth) to her hometown in the deep South. When they return to her ancestral village tensions build between them, a brewing conflict with locals (Rhys Coiro, Billy Lush and led by Alexander Skarsgård as Charlie) becomes a threat to them both. Meanwhile David is working on a story about Stalingrad (the book is early in the movie is 'Stalingrad' by Anthony Beevor). There her former boyfriends become resentful , jealous and desirous of her , as she taunts them with her wealth and nudism and she is viciously attacked . As the marriage is bullied and taken advantage of by the locals (in original rendition were played by Ken Hutchinson, David Warner , Peter Vaughan , Del Henney) hired to do construction. When David finally takes a stand it escalates quickly into a bloody battle as the locals assault his house . David whose pacifism is put to supreme test attempts to protect a dim-witted man (Dominic Purcell) who is suspected of disappearance and molesting a young girl (Willa Holland) , his house is put under siege by the incensed villagers , but David defends the mansion with ferocity .
New but inferior version version about one of the most controversial violence-themed pictures of its day ; dealing with a known plot , as a young American and his wife come to rural little town and face increasingly vicious local harassment. The film, a remake of the controversially violent 1971 movie, is considered fairly faithful to Sam Peckinpah's original, though the location has been moved from Cornwall, England to the U.S. Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the hero's profession has been changed from an intellectual mathematician to screenwriter . The title comes from the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, who wrote, "Heaven and earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs, " Straw dogs were used as ceremonial objects for religious sacrifices in ancient China. The picture is as violent as the first version , in fact, because of its graphic portrayal of violence and two brutal rapes, the British Board of Film Censors banned the film from being released on video from 1984 until 2002. The highly charged sequences of carnage in the conclusion make this a controversial movie similarly to original picture .
The motion picture was professionally directed by Rod Lurie though with no originally , resulting to be a simple copy from Peckinpah flick , being equally based on the novel "The Siege of Trencher's Farm" by Gordon Williams , including screenplay by David Goodman and the same Peckinpah. Rod is a talented film critic-turned-director who burst onto the scene in late 2000 with his hotly debated political thriller ¨The contender¨. After writing some scripts , Lurie was already hard at work at his next film, working with his acting hero Robert Redford. The result was the 2001 action/drama ¨The last castle ¨ (2001). It centered on an imprisoned military general, forced to go up against a tyrannical prison warden . He subsequently directed ¨Resurrecting the champ¨ and ¨Nothing but the truth¨, both of them were commercial failures despite some favorable reviews as well as ¨Straw Dogs¨.
