My Review: Straw Dogs

Friday, September 16, 2011
I've never seen the original Straw Dogs, but I'm going to assume that it is better than this one. To be honest, the only reason I went to seet his movie is because of Alexander Skarsgard, and his performance is pretty much the only good thing about it. I could be biased, but I just really didn't care for anyone else in this movie. For the whole beginning of the movie I just wanted James Marsden to stop being a push-over, and for Kate Bosworth to put on a bra and eat something. I mean, damn, all of her bones are sticking out and she just looks strange.
So, this movie is about an actress and her writer husband who move to her parents house while he is writing a script. The town where she grew up is a hick ass southern town where everyone is obsessed with football and hunting (even when it's not hunting season...) Skarsgard plays Bosworth's ex-boyfriend Charlie who is hired to fix there garage with his friends. He plays the worst kind of villian. Everytime Marsden's character tries to talk to him about something, he is all polite and apologetic, so it makes Marsden seem like an asshole. It is a lot easier to yell at someone when they are being an asshole to you. So anyways, they find their cat dead in their closet, and instead of accusing Charlie and his friends, he ends up going hunting with them. So, they abandon him in the woods and Charlie goes back to the house and rapes his wife. I thought that it was really strange how they filmed it like a sex scene. I mean, they have the shot of him taking his shirt off, and they even have the camera go up his chest. Yes, Alexander Skarsgard is a VERY sexy guy, but we're not supposed to think that he's sexy when he's raping her!!! We should be horrified! What makes it creepy though, is that he doesn't seem to think that he's doing anything wrong. So anyways, after that is over, another guy comes in and rapes her too! This guy is nowhere near as good looking as Skarsgard, so of course they have her yelling, crying, and screaming during this part. WTF? What pissed me off even more is that she doesn't even tell her husband, or insist that they get the hell out of there.
So, theres this mentally challenged guy named Jeremy who thinks that this drunken guy's (James Woods) daughter is his girlfriend, and you see him and her thoughout the movie. Towards the end, he ends up killing her by covering her mouth when they heard her dad  looking for them. Marsden's character hits him with their car, so they take him back to the house. James Woods is freaking out about his daughter, so he's looking for him and he hears over the radio that they are at Bosworth and Marsden's house. So, they go over there and demand to talk to Jeremy. Marsden refuses, so they get violent. Then all hell breaks loose and Marsden kills them all.
To me, it just all seemed really unnecessary. When the cop came, I would have handed Jeremy over, especially since he did something to the girl. It is just so stupid because it seems like it could have been handled a lot better. I'm not saying that if they handed Jeremy over to them that everything would have been fine, but I don't know... I just thought that it was weird that he went from push-over to psycho killer guy in like two seconds, especially since they only went there to get Jeremy. Their intention when they got there wasn't to kill them, it was just to get Jeremy and find out what happened to the drunken coaches daughter. Yes, two of the guys were rapists, so I would understand Marsden wanting to kill them, but he didn't even know that they raped his wife. I am just really torn by the ending. They were bad guys who were breaking into their house, and Skarsgard's character and the other rapist guy deserved to die. Right when I saw that bear trap, I just knew it was going to be used... James Woods killed that cop, but he was also freaking out about his daughter. I mean, if it were my daughter I would want to kill that guy too, but he really didn't have to shoot that cop. Gosh, I don't know, I don't really want to think about it anymore. It is good that the good guys beat the bad guys, but I just thought that it was strange that they were protecting a murderer. My rating: 5/10

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