Movie Reviews

The cover art on the DVD box of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs proudly proclaims "Banned in the U.K.", so of course I had to check this one out.

Turns out it's a pretty good movie. Dustin Hoffman plays David Sumner, a nerdy mathematician who has recently moved to the English countryside with his beautiful, but slightly childish, wife Amy. David intends to spend his time in peace and quiet in their farmhouse, so that he can finish writing a book. Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that life isn't going to be so peaceful for him, as he notices the way that a lot of guys in the nearby town (including three of which who have been hired to revonate his farmhouse) look at his wife. These three guys in particular start causing David a lot of problems, namely because they barely seem to be doing any work. David, however, is pretty weak-willed, and is hesitant to stand up to them.

While driving home in the fog one evening after a town party, David and his wife hit a suspected pedophile (unknown to them) in the street. They take him back to their house with the intention of calling a doctor, only to discover that a crowd of rowdy drunks (including the three men who were working for the Sumners) has followed them home -- and they're very intent on getting their hands on the suspected pedophile. It's the last act of the film that I supposed earned the "Banned in the U.K." disclaimer, as David finally toughens up and becomes hell-bent on keeping the hooligans out of his house, by any and all means possible.

Violence in a movie like this is much more powerful than in a lot of movies that have non-stop blood and guts all over the place. This is mainly because, I believe, it's not gratuitous. Straw Dogs builds up logically to the violence that occurs at the end, and as graphic as it is, it has a point and a meaning, especially in terms of the "character-arc" of David Sumner.

When people say that modern film audiences are "de-sensitized" to film violence, I think part of the blame comes from filmmakers who make films that are violent for the sake of being violent, and after a while these films simply cease to be very interesting. Smart films like Straw Dogs, however, can continue to be powerful and shocking even more than thirty years after being released because they are violent without being gratuitous.