Ah the deep South, you have to love how movie producers figure that the one place in the world they can remake a movie in with villains and disgusting mongoloids without suffering any backlash is the deep South. Granted, I have no use for the South (except for Lynyrd Skynyrd), but it's pretty much a hack job when writers take a movie and move the entire setting in to the deep South to completely remake a classic movie beat by beat. Rather than the English countryside this time director Rod Lurie moves the story to the South where he's able to pretty much build characters on old fashioned cliches that never quite help the story along. Even with Lurie writing the screenplay, the 2011 version of "Straw Dogs" is more of a repackaging of the classic film.

Lurie doesn't really seem to understand much of the material he's dealing with, nor does he really seem to understand the entire sexual dynamic between the main character's wife the butch men that take every opportunity to belittle and degrade her husband. Even in the key scene involving the infamous rape/sex scene, Luria completely waters it down and tones down the disturbing element to it where it seems that the victim of the sexual assault seems to somehow enjoy being ravaged and dominated. When Susan George is attacked and assaulted by ex-boyfriend there's this inclination that she's fighting back but ultimately wants to be taken sexually, which adds to the rather disturbing element of the entire scene. When Kate Bosworth's depiction of Amy experiences the same confrontation the sexuality of it is noticeably toned down thus her motives for the entire portion of the first half of the story remain absolutely foggy to the audience.

She's a simple minded dunce who eggs on every man she comes in contact with, but she's somehow the heroine in the finale? Why should we even be on her side when everyone has died? In the end of Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" not even David liked Amy in the end and takes great pains in dominating her like a child when she displays a keen spineless cowardice under pressure of the relentless attacks from outside. As for the cast, they're there to do their jobs and nothing more. Everyone who isn't Bosworth or Marsden have to play up the Southern stereotypes, so James Woods is a crusty old coach who loves to drinks, Alexander Skarsgard is a good old boy repairman and everyone in the town the Somner's frequent display an almost comical annoyance at the character's presence. I almost expected to see people playing banjos on porches. As for Marsden, he's a very talented actor but just don't buy him as a meek and quiet pacifist. Hoffman looked as if he was going to break in two any minute in the original film, while Marsden is really just a citygoer with no street smarts. Lurie doesn't take advantage of the disturbing sexual nature of the story and how the narrative perceives both women and David as the enemy of this unwitting town, and really just follows the bouncing ball to the blood soaked climax that really never reaches the exciting highs of the original film.