Straw Dogs polarized its audience upon its release; four decades hence, it still hasn’t lost that ability – that shows how relevant and topical the movie is to the current times as it was during the Vietnam War era. Considered the finest non-Western from Sam Peckinpah, Straw Dogs is a deeply disturbing meditation on the vicious cycle of violence that is intrinsic to human nature and society. Dustin Hoffman, in one of the most remarkable roles of his distinguished career, plays David Summer, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered and nerdish American mathematician, who has relocated with her wife to a small Cornish village where she was born, in order to escape the commotion back home in the US. The promiscuous nature and overt sexuality of Amy (played brilliantly by Susan George), heightened by her boredom, attract the attention of the young men working for David, and soon enough the film enters harrowing territory that is both powerful and distressing in its stark and relentless portrayal of primal human instincts. David’s inevitable journey from deliberate avoidance of to headlong plunge into masculinity and animalistic violence is thus as nerve-racking as it is liberating, quite akin to David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Aided by the eerie score and jittery editing, this visceral Sam Peckinpah classic remains one of the most explosive and provocative films ever made.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Genre: Drama/Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Crime Thriller
Language: English
Country: UK
