Straw Dogs needs to quit worrying and embrace the bear trap

When you watch the trailer for Straw Dogs, you automatically know what this movie is going to be. Even if, like me, you’ve never seen the original, you know that some out-of-towners are going to be menaced by some creepy rednecks before falling victim to an all-out siege, chock full of guns and violence. The trailer even shows some of the Home Alone-like implements used: pots of boiling water, a nail gun. This is why folks are going to see this movie — so why did we have to sit through an hour and a half of tedious plot threads just to get to it?

Amy Sumner (Kate Bosworth) is a C-list television actress who’s forced to visit the hometown she fled as a teenager after her father dies. She and her pretentious writer husband, David (James Marsden), head back to Blackwater, Mississippi (pronounced “Backwater,” as Amy intones early on, just in case we don’t get that it’s full of rednecks), partially to fix a barn felled by a hurricane and partially so David can have a quaint, quiet place to work on his screenplay about Stalingrad.

It’s established pretty early on that David doesn’t fit in in Blackwater. He tries to use a credit card instead of American cash, his shoes don’t have laces. But more importantly, he’s not a man in Blackwater. He balks at Budweiser from the tap, he doesn’t love football and he’s never hunted. He’s soft. He’s a man of privilege; a man who uses his principles instead of his fists. In short, he’s Edward Norton at the beginning of Fight Club.

This fact is established pretty quickly, yet we’re forced to endure over an hour of it being driven home. Even Amy gets in on the action and spends most of the movie passive-aggresively trying to convince him that she doesn’t care that he’s a giant pussy. In fact, we get a lot of David and Amy’s marriage dynamic: he looks down on her for dressing too provocatively; she’s insecure because she feels he’s smarter than she is. This is in addition to all of the other plot points that include a rapey Forrest Gump-type meathead, played by Prison Break‘s Dominic Purcell, his put-upon older brother (a criminally underused Walton Goggins), an alcoholic ex-football coach (James Woods), and of course, Amy’s creepy ex-boyfriend Charlie (True Blood‘s Alexander Skarsgård). They’ve got a lot of stuff going on, but the short story is, they don’t like city boys.

Straw Dogs spends a painful amount of time getting to the point. It establishes early on that Blackwater is full of psychotic rednecks just looking for the smallest opportunity to turn into rapists and murderers. It’s so offensive against Southern people that it circles around to being completely non-offensive because it’s so ridiculous. It is a story in which nuance is neither expected nor desired, but they keep trying to give it to us anyway.

It may seem weird to say it, but Straw Dogs could learn a thing or two from Kevin Smith. Smith is one of the internet’s favorite punching bags, but his Red State succeeds where Straw Dogs fails. His well-documented obsession with his movie led to a continuous editing process, with scenes shaved off even after its Sundance premiere. Straw Dogs clocks in at 108 minutes, but would have been infinitely better at a tight 90.

A movie that culminates in a giant blood orgy isn’t one we need to sit on for more than an hour and a half. In fact, I’m pretty sure the last Final Destination movie was only about 20 minutes long. Red State gives us the basic facts: horny boys; fucked up church; overzealous Feds — and then just sits back and lets them have at it. Red State gets to the point and is infinitely watchable. When Straw Dogs finally gets to the point, you’re similarly on board.

The siege portion of the film, which you know is coming just by watching the trailer, is bloody, and horrifying, and kind of fun. There are shocking moments throughout, and I was pleasantly surprised by how unpredictable it was. David gets a little Rambo, but uses his inherent intellect to help protect his wife (hence the clever weapons, like the pots of boiling water).

I would imagine that we’re supposed to take away a lesson about manliness, and how despite his bookish appearance, David will still have no qualms about setting a bear trap off on someone’s head like a BOSS. But Straw Dogs isn’t a movie that I want to learn lessons from. It’s a movie that I want to watch and cover my eyes during the gross parts. When it finally embraces the bear trap, both the movie and the audience win — though dude in the bear trap continues to have a bad night.

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Sep 16, 2011 @ 09:00 EST5EDT