With the help of a research grant, timid astrophysicist David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) travels to England with British wife Amy (Susan George.) Hoping to escape the violent protests of Vietnam-era America, the two settle down in Amy's hometown, a tiny village in Cornwall, where less-than-friendly locals take it upon themselves to make their lives a living hell.
There's a list a mile long of all the things that work in this movie, but the single biggest contributor is Peckinpah's refusal to cut corners.
Many a movie that bills itself on the basis of its climax forgets that crescendos are a privilege and not a right; that they must be earned, that they must be paid for. Do the Right Thing, great though it is, never fully invests itself in the question of why this particular hot day is the catalyst for disaster when so many other hot days have come and gone without incident. While the climax might conceivably develop from the events depicted, an abundance of unanswered questions leaves it feeling more like writer's convenience, and less like natural construction.
With Straw Dogs, the outcome is both possible and inevitable, and Peckinpah has us convinced of that fact within the first ten minutes of the running time. In ten minutes flat, we have the perfect storm of troubled marriages, the Sumners just passionate enough to excite the ire of a former lover, and just defunct enough to preclude the kind of unity they need to stand strong. We have a town in shambles, where the lawman is impotent and the closest approximation to a moral authority is an ill-tempered drunkard whose son is a rapist. We have a band of hooligan locals, tied to the married couple by a rubber stamp construction job (a garage that's never finished) and led by Amy's one-time Charlie Venner (Del Henney) who get their kicks out of exploiting David's apparent lack of virility and drive a wedge into the already fraught relationship in the hopes of getting Amy alone. We have unanimous contempt for the American outsider, and shame for the English woman who lowered herself by marrying him. We have a town madman whom the entire village is clamoring to kill, along with whoever else gets in their way, and last but not least, we have the ubiquitous glass of whiskey to push people past the breaking point when every other aggravating factor fails, all this rendered naturally and believably in the first ten minutes of the film. The rest of the movie is one big bi-product, the story flowing from A to B to C, each plot point a direct consequence of the one preceding it, everything building steadily and irrevocably to one of the most horrific and well-earned climaxes in cinematic history.
Hoffman's performance as the high-strung astrophysicist edging closer and closer to the brink is one of the best of his career, if only because of its subtlety, its slow transformation. Susan George is, in some ways, even stronger than Hoffman. A boiling pot of rage and frustration, her character is truly heart wrenching, especially in the latter half of the film, as she struggles to rise above her morbid abuse. Best of all, the two actors behave as if they were actually married to each other, assuming all the tricks and gestures and mannerisms of that extreme, almost destructive level of physical comfort, something we rarely see in Hollywood matrimony.
Straw Dogs is a spectacular film and a terrific western, adhering, as it does, to nearly ever convention of the genre. In the final analysis, David Sumner is just another gunman goaded into a showdown. The Scottish bagpipes at the apex of the movie, not unlike the horns that start playing whenever the gunslinger steps out of the saloon, drone away in haunting irony as David moves across the room, trance-like, his latent savagery shaking its way into wakefulness. With expert care, with every note true, Peckinpah frees the western from its moorings in 19th-century America and transports it to England, betraying both the timelessness of violence and unfortunately its international character.
There's a list a mile long of all the things that work in this movie, but the single biggest contributor is Peckinpah's refusal to cut corners.
Many a movie that bills itself on the basis of its climax forgets that crescendos are a privilege and not a right; that they must be earned, that they must be paid for. Do the Right Thing, great though it is, never fully invests itself in the question of why this particular hot day is the catalyst for disaster when so many other hot days have come and gone without incident. While the climax might conceivably develop from the events depicted, an abundance of unanswered questions leaves it feeling more like writer's convenience, and less like natural construction.
With Straw Dogs, the outcome is both possible and inevitable, and Peckinpah has us convinced of that fact within the first ten minutes of the running time. In ten minutes flat, we have the perfect storm of troubled marriages, the Sumners just passionate enough to excite the ire of a former lover, and just defunct enough to preclude the kind of unity they need to stand strong. We have a town in shambles, where the lawman is impotent and the closest approximation to a moral authority is an ill-tempered drunkard whose son is a rapist. We have a band of hooligan locals, tied to the married couple by a rubber stamp construction job (a garage that's never finished) and led by Amy's one-time Charlie Venner (Del Henney) who get their kicks out of exploiting David's apparent lack of virility and drive a wedge into the already fraught relationship in the hopes of getting Amy alone. We have unanimous contempt for the American outsider, and shame for the English woman who lowered herself by marrying him. We have a town madman whom the entire village is clamoring to kill, along with whoever else gets in their way, and last but not least, we have the ubiquitous glass of whiskey to push people past the breaking point when every other aggravating factor fails, all this rendered naturally and believably in the first ten minutes of the film. The rest of the movie is one big bi-product, the story flowing from A to B to C, each plot point a direct consequence of the one preceding it, everything building steadily and irrevocably to one of the most horrific and well-earned climaxes in cinematic history.
Hoffman's performance as the high-strung astrophysicist edging closer and closer to the brink is one of the best of his career, if only because of its subtlety, its slow transformation. Susan George is, in some ways, even stronger than Hoffman. A boiling pot of rage and frustration, her character is truly heart wrenching, especially in the latter half of the film, as she struggles to rise above her morbid abuse. Best of all, the two actors behave as if they were actually married to each other, assuming all the tricks and gestures and mannerisms of that extreme, almost destructive level of physical comfort, something we rarely see in Hollywood matrimony.
Straw Dogs is a spectacular film and a terrific western, adhering, as it does, to nearly ever convention of the genre. In the final analysis, David Sumner is just another gunman goaded into a showdown. The Scottish bagpipes at the apex of the movie, not unlike the horns that start playing whenever the gunslinger steps out of the saloon, drone away in haunting irony as David moves across the room, trance-like, his latent savagery shaking its way into wakefulness. With expert care, with every note true, Peckinpah frees the western from its moorings in 19th-century America and transports it to England, betraying both the timelessness of violence and unfortunately its international character.