Directed by:
Sam PeckinpahCinematography:
John CoquillonComposer:
Jerry FieldingCast:
Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, David Warner, Ken Hutchison, Del Henney, Jim Norton, Donald Webster, Len Jones, Sally Thomsett (more)Plots(1)
In this thriller, perhaps Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial film, David (Dustin Hoffman), a young American mathematician, moves with his English wife, Amy (Susan George), to the village where she grew up. Their sense of safety unravels as the local men David has hired to repair their house prove more interested in leering at Amy and intimidating David, beginning an agonizing initiation into the iron laws of violent masculinity that govern Peckinpah’s world. Working outside the U.S. for the first time, the filmmaker airlifts the ruthlessness of the western frontier into Cornwall in Straw Dogs, pushing his characters to their breaking points as the men brutalize Amy and David discovers how far he’ll go to protect his home - culminating in a harrowing climax that lays out this cinematic mastermind’s eloquent and bloody vision of humanity. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (9)
A clear example that even someone who seems harmless can become a threat to their oppressors under oppressive circumstances. Dustin Hoffman as a mathematics teacher convincingly portrayed the transformation from a pushover to an individual fighting for survival, and Susan George in the role of his wife matched him in acting skill perfectly. This finely crafted suspenseful film, with a touch of exaggeration, could be considered a small showcase of repulsive bully characters. Watching the film caused very depressing feelings in me, which I am not going to torture myself with again. (75%)
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From my perspective, this is the strongest film by Sam Peckinpah. It is an incredibly powerful, unsettling drama dedicated to the phenomenon of violence. Psychologically accurate, credible, absurdly realistic, hurtful, and very bitter... A slowly unfolding story of the confrontation between an intellectually focused college student and uneducated country folk gradually gains momentum and culminates in a shocking massacre. It is a film about different value systems, the inability to compromise, but above all about dark instincts and suppressed aggressiveness that hide within each of us, and if circumstances allow them to manifest, they can cause unimaginable damage. Overall impression: 95%.
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Scarecrows serve studies of violence, transformations of human nature, or layers of fear, but in such a bland form that not even the traditionally precise Dustin Hoffman can save anything. When I want to see a transition of the hero from a weakling to a cold defensive machine, I expect more than a helpless guy who suddenly squints his eyes and starts acting. That is not an incredibly built twist for me, but a deus ex machina in favor of Peckinpah, who can indulge himself in blood, action, and editing.
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A year before Boorman’s Deliverance, Peckinpah came along with an almost identical idea. The only difference is the setting in the Highlands of Scotland. That’s where American physicist David moves with his English wife with slightly loose morals. The excellent steady rise in tension and perfect actors are the main pluses. Straw Dogs will no longer provoke such controversy as when it was released, but even so, it has much to offer even to today’s viewer.
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This return to the 1970s in the company of Dustin Hoffman and with Sam Peckinpah’s brilliant direction made me very happy.
Straw Dogs is distinguished by its tense atmosphere, unconventional protagonist and, especially, female sexuality
portrayed in an animal-like and instinctive fashion, which typical of Peckinpah’s works and never matched by anyone
else in mainstream films. I wonder why this didn’t get an Academy Award nomination for editing. Was this film too
spontaneous and sensuous, not textbook-smooth enough for the Academy?
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Gallery (77)
Photo © Buena Vista Pictures
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