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List Price: $39.95 | | Label: Criterion
Salesrank: 38262
Released: March 25, 2003 |
| Our Price: $46.00 |
| Used Price: $20.00 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Straw Dogs - Criterion Collection Reviews:
Great Classic 
2009-11-17 - I have not seen this movie since it came out in the theaters. Great Dustin Hoffman movie. Was shipped in good time and condition.
difficult film
2009-07-05 - Is this an anti-violent film? Or does Straw Dogs advocate the use of violence in extreame circumstanes?
David Summner is a math academic. He and his English wife, Amy, move to England's countryside in 1971. Amy's home town. His wife implies early in the movie that they have gone there because David did not want to take a side during the campus upevil, a big issue in America in the early 70s. This was only a few years after the Columbia takeover, and Kent State.
Neither David or Amy find the peace they look for in the UK. Both are soon confronted by the ruffian villagers, who are doing repair work at the Summners. One of them has been in jail, and the other had a long ago daliance with Amy. These are not nice man, but it hardly helps matters when Amy stops, topless, at a window in front of the workers.
Eventually, the men distract David, and Amy is raped, first by her former suiter, and then much more forceably by another in the possee. She does not tell David, but, he knows. Still, he does not confront the men.
But he does, the next day. When a disabled man accidently kills the daughter of one of the toughs, David accidently hits him in his car, and takes him home to care for him and protect him from the gang. The hoods arrive, and demand David hand him over. David refuses, and the men raid the house, setting fires, trying to get in.
He has had enough, and David fends them off with guns, knives, and homemade hot acid he prepares on his stove. He is transformed: at one point, one of the men is bound, his neck on broken glass, and the once jellyfish David says "good, I hope you slit your throat." Amy at first refuses to help David, but he, slapping her, litterally threatens to kill her if she does not. "We're dead if they get in." he says
One by one and with increasing relish, David kills all the men,
On the surface, the arguement that this is a pro-violent film is pretty strong. David seems to get vindication for himself, and Amy, by confronting and winning the battle with these sociopaths.
But at what price: David ends the film, clothes torn, blood stained,
his home in ruins. He has hit his wife and crossed lines he can never uncross. Was he right? Did he have any other real options? What has this done to him at his core--he will cetianly never be the person he was before that night. His marrage: what is going to happen to both these people?
In 1971, you could apply these questions to Vietnam, student uprisings, race riots. Now, you could ask: what do we do about an Osama Bin Ladin, a Taliban? How does a peaceful person act when confroted by an amoral bully? Eight years after 9/11, Abu Grabe, Gauntonamo Bay, are WE ever going to be the same? What has the unthinkable made US do?
This film is not going to answer any of the questions it poeses in a way that makes thinking people feel comforable. But, then and now, it does provide a context in which we can think about when violence is really needed, and how we deal with it when it is. Straw Dogs shows the COST of violence.
At the end of the film, the disabled man says "I don't know my way home."
"That's ok," replies David.
"I don't know, either."
Better DVDs Make This Better, Too 
2009-05-01 - I didn't really appreciate this movie until several viewings when a good print of this film finally came out on DVD. Since then, even a better one came out on Criterion and who knows, maybe we'll even get a great Blu-Ray transfer some day. The old VHS tapes of this film were awful.
I have to admit: watching Susan George is one of the big enjoyments of this movie. She is hot! In reality, it's doubtful someone like her would marry a nerd like the character played by Dustin Hoffman, although that "nerd" comes out of his shell in the suspense-filled last half hour.
This is one of those early `70 films that broke ground and shocked a lot of people. It's still an intense, uncomfortable movie, some 38 years after it was first released.
Are we really this uncivil?
2009-02-02 - The whole time I sat through `Straw Dogs' I was uncomfortable; not in a bad way though. Director Sam Peckinpah does a phenomenal job of making every sequence feel more and more unnerving, even if the violence and terror doesn't truly take place until the tale end of the film. You feel dirty, almost as if you were a voyeur taking a peek in on the lives of this beautifully conflicted couple as they expose themselves to you; flaws and all.
You feel like the enemy.
The film tells the story of David and Amy Sumner, a young couple who moves to rural England while David is on sabbatical. Amy once grew up in the small town, and her new husband, the book smart yet socially clueless mathematician, is less than welcomed by the community. As David immerses himself in his work his relationship with his wife begins to strain until she finds herself taunting the eyes of a local ex-boyfriend who happens to be helping fix up the Sumner's home. This teasing can only go so far before it takes a turn for the worse, and when a seemingly mutual tryst goes all sorts of wrong it paves the way for the Sumner's new life to come crashing down on them.
The film is breathtakingly honest and brutal in its delivery; very gritty and raw. There are scenes that are very hard to stomach, not necessarily because they are gruesome or explicit (the violence is mild compared to the horror movies of today) but because each and every scene feels real.
The acting aids in this feeling of reality, especially from the two leads, Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. I personally feel that George is the standout here. Her characters development is very passionate and convincing. The big pivotal `tryst' scene is the best acting in the entire film; the confliction (`do I want to, yes, no, yes, no') and then raw emotion is utterly mesmerizing. Hoffman is also very good here, some of his best work really. He captures his characters sense of justice, and as the film escalates into the pits of violence we see his views change drastically, yet always convincingly.
My one complaint is that, while the film seems to have a lot to say about human interaction and the natural desire to exact pure justice, it seems to lose its head in the finale. It almost feels like just an excuse to bleed forth with unrelenting violence. It has a purpose, but it doesn't feel like it, so it winds up feeling unnecessary. That is just my personal take. Honestly, the film up until the finale is much more successful in delivering the haunting chill with the quiet moments of uncertainty. The fast paced and rather frustrating barrage that is the final ten minutes feels like too much at once. It's not a bad way to go out, but it's not the way I would have chosen.
Still, there is much to be said about this film and its powerful impact. One can easily draw the moral code being flaunted throughout the piece; a certain warning against acting on our imperfect desires and impulses. No one within this film outside of David (who is the outsider here) restrains themselves, which serves as a lurid foundation for our own social standing. Are we a people who pride ourselves on control, or are we happy to allow our true person shine through, no matter how devastating the after effects? `Straw Dogs' is a disturbing look at what life without control would look like.
Incredibly sophisticated film-making belies the lurid subject
2008-11-27 - Eerie and disconcerting from the very first frame. Director/Co-Writer Peckinpah creates a strange alternative universe where people act on their base impulses. A stuffy professor (Dustin Hoffman) and his gorgeous young wife (Susan George) are thrown into this world and almost destroyed by it. Peckinpah creates a rich tapestry of characters and brilliantly explores the subtle and occasionally explosives shifts in power between them. The high-minded sophistication of film-making belies the outwardly lurid nature of the subject - "Deliverance" springs to mind as another example of this. Stunning in every department - acting (especially by Hoffman and George), editing, writing, music, cinematography, and of-course direction. In many ways Peckinpah's best film.
The DVD version I have (Region 4) also features:
- Interviews
- Commentaries
- Standalone musical score
