Straw Dogs

While there are probably people out there who could pull off a remake of the classic Straw Dogs, this isn't the group.

I tried real hard to like this film since I'm a huge fan of Walton Goggins, but this should have been left on the shelf.

The actress playing the wife did a rather good job, though, in a role that is not easy to pull off and achieve a believable balance.

Overall I wouldn't give this more than about 4 or 5 points.

Next time someone tries this I really hope they can give us something worth watching. This is a truly worthwhile script that can be done better, perhaps even better than the original. I'd like to see that.

As a fan of Alexander Skarsgård, I really tried to like the movie - but I just couldn't. If the hushed nature of the theater crowed leaving at the end is any indication - they felt the same way. I feel the cast did well with what they had, but the script was lacking in too many ways. Where the 1971 version had tension and excitement, the 2011 version was often boring and all over the place. I often felt like it was Texas Chainsaw Massacre decided to have a get together with Deliverance and Sweet Home Alabama. The whole thing just felt awkward and thrown together. There were only a handful of scenes where the movie actually had my attention - but they were few and far apart and short lived. There were even moments that were so awkward they were actually uncomfortable. I expected so much more with such a classic movie base and wonderful cast - but ultimately it was disappointing.

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¨.

Most modern remakes carry with them a whiff of disappointment, a general feeling of déjà vu and a sense that watching is time wasted because they're invariably going to be worse than the original (apart from in a few instances). The same can well be said of STRAW DOGS, a film that relocates Sam Peckinpah's controversial classic in the southern USA but otherwise tells exactly the same story, with the same sequences and even the same dialogue beats.

Put simply, STRAW DOGS is a fine enough film in itself and would be more impressive if the original didn't exist. Compared to the original, it comes second in every way; the cast is a lot worse, the direction is non-existent compared to Peckinpah's masterful stylistics, and the power is just lacking. Fans of the original would do better to stick with that because there's no way this film has a hope of coming close to it.

Taken as a standalone movie, though, and compared to other modern thrillers, it turns out to be…well, not bad. The slow-building plot is as effective as ever, and the climax doesn't disappointment when it arrives and unleashes a wave of violence upon the screen. James Marsden struggles because you can't help but compare him to Dustin Hoffman in the role, and Kate Bosworth doesn't really capture that level of coquettishness that the Susan George character had, either.

But the supporting players are better, and Alexander Skarsgard is particularly sinister as the bad guy who doesn't really do anything all that bad – although we hate him anyway. James Woods ignites the screen, as ever, and Dominic Purcell offers a completely different performance to David Warner's, so his role is all the better for it.

So what we have here is a film that can be taken in two different ways. As a remake, it's a pale effort compared to the vibrant original. As a standalone movie, it's a pretty tense thriller with a gripping storyline. I liked it enough the first time around, but is it worth a rewatch? Not like the original.

This remake has no reason to exist. It is shallow and poorly acted and lacks most of the tense emotions and moral questions raised by the original. Hollywood at its worst, cellophane-wrapped, uninspired, made-for-TV quality, cookie cutter remake. Of course, it is padded with clichés, cheap effects and mass-appeal frosting to bring out brain-dead teen movie goers. Why did a great actor like James Wood let himself get suckered into this disaster? This could have been an so-so B-action movie but trying to cash in on the status of Sam Peckinpah's cult classic is a really cheap move. It also forces me to give it a 1-star rating rather than a 4 to 5 rating it could have earned if it didn't ask to be compared with the former.

If you consider watching this movie, please rent the original instead. It is still as intense as it was in 1971 and actually raises a lot of disturbing questions. A true classic.