Straw Dogs

To view the film Straw Dogs only as a redneck horror movie is definitely short-sighted. It's a film that raises quite interesting questions about what we are willing to do to protect our loved ones. And where is the boundary beyond which we can no longer go? Is there even a boundary that we cannot approve of? Or is it all because we can awaken the beast within us, which lies dormant, and we are even willing to let it rage? It’s very disturbing, even after all this time. Some movies just don't age. (05/02/2014)

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? (20/01/2012)

Toying with the viewers and their mind is the best that a movie can offer. Alfred Hitchcock already knew that, just like a number of directors who follow his example and try to base their movies off it. Straw Dogs is a pretty rough movie. The main plus is the young Dustin Hoffmann, who transforms from a scaredy young man into a right butcher throughout the movie; aka basic human instincts win over reason. And that’s what the entire movie unfolds from. It has its charm, it’s worth watching, but in my opinion, the three stars are just enough for it. (01/11/2013)

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%. (01/04/2009)

Straw Dogs serves up a study of violence, transformations of human nature, and 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 to benefit Sam Peckinpah, who really has a knack for indulging himself with blood, action, and editing. (05/07/2007)