What in the Sam Peckinpah Hill is this?!?

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

It isn't badly made, but what's the point of rebooting Straw Dogs, if the only object is to repackage it, and make it marginally less offensive?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2011

Rod Lurie has adapted with intelligence...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2011

The plot boils up nicely, warmed by Alexander Skarsgard's sinisterly compelling thug leader and set bubbling by James Woods's terrific turn as a semi-psychotic town elder.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2011

Marsden, Bosworth and Skarsgrd are superb. But what was the point?

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2011

Lurie's remake doesn't bring a lot of fresh ideas to the table. The thick fug of moral ambiguity, so disconcerting in Peckinpah's film, is missing, replaced by certainties rife in modern horror.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 25, 2011

This Straw Dogs is nearly all bark, with the occasional, predictable bite that frankly fails to draw any emotional blood.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 23, 2011

A routine, if rather gruesome thriller with attractive leads ducking in and out of danger.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 23, 2011

Everything here plays out to the same beats and yet ultimately results in conventional revenge-minded catharsis rather than queasy ambivalence.

| Sep 16, 2011

Doggedly faithful and yet soft around the edges.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 16, 2011

To call out any remake as specifically "unnecessary" is a dash down a rabbit hole, but the mere existence of a 2011 cover of 'Straw Dogs' is, all things considered, befuddling.

| Sep 16, 2011

While Lurie could have gone lighter on the symbolism, he ratchets up the tension with deft intelligence. He's not just making a thriller but a horror film, and we feel his own fear in every scene.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 16, 2011

One of those movies that sits in an armchair, smokes a pipe and reflects "seriously" on "the question of violence," but the main reason to see it is for the hilariously nasty uses it devises for a bear trap, nail gun, etc.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 16, 2011

Lurie's smart enough to know that we're supposed to be disturbed -- and not titillated -- by the savagery the movie depicts.

| Sep 16, 2011

For the most part, Lurie's remake serves as a credible update to the original, and the performances from Skarsgard, Marsden and Bosworth are solid.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 16, 2011

Lurie informs his movie with plenty of nods to the original and at least manages a story that will have people talking - if not about the nature of human violence, then about the grisly depiction of it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 15, 2011

You can understand Lurie's motivation for remaking Straw Dogs, and applaud the competence of his filmmaking and casting, while at the same time lamenting what has happened to him.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 15, 2011

Back in 1971, the Peckinpah film horrified moviegoers with its bloody climax, whereas today people are so vengeful and sadistic that the remake is just another multiplex crowd pleaser.

| Sep 15, 2011

[It] doesn't bring anything new to the table.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Sep 15, 2011

Rod Lurie's bird-brained remake of "Straw Dogs" doesn't work on its own terms, and it can't hold a candle to the unruly, unstable merits of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 original.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 15, 2011