Straw Dogs
Screen Gems | Release Date: September 16, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
12
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertSep 14, 2011
Rod Lurie has made a first-rate film of psychological warfare, and yes, I thought it was better than Peckinpah's. Marsden, Bosworth and Skarsgard are all persuasive, and although James Woods has played a lot of evil men during his career, this one may be the scariest. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezSep 14, 2011
Straw Dogs is an artful provocation - a meditation on masculinity and societal mores in the guise of an explosive thriller. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanSep 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. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 17, 2011
Although the moral ambiguity of Straw Dogs has been softened in the remake, the message and the forceful way in which it is delivered remain the same. Read full review
75
USA TodayScott BowlesSep 15, 2011
Even by today's standards, some scenes are jaw-dropping in their bloodshed. To that end, Lurie accomplishes some of what Peckinpah evoked 40 years ago. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 15, 2011
Peckinpah rubbed our noses in the bloodlust. Lurie invites objectivity. He gets strong, complex performances from actors who won't be painted into corners. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe HollemanSep 16, 2011
More damaging is Lurie's conspicuous "red state" rant, as he makes sure that every prominent guy in this film - save for the screenwriter and the black sheriff - fits all of the Southern stereotypes. That doesn't make it a bad movie, just one that is something less than Peckinpah's original. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottSep 16, 2011
As it turns out, though, the most troubling part of the film for me wasn't the rape scene, or the siege scene or the Southern stereotypes. Rather, it was the audience's reaction to Marsden's chilling spasms of bloody violence as he defends his home. Rather than breaking out in hives, many in the audience broke out in laughter. Read full review
60
Village VoiceNick PinkertonSep 17, 2011
There's no matching the sinister village faces in Peckinpah's cast or the psychological acuity of his scene-making, but Lurie shows himself man enough for the material. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanSep 15, 2011
The original "Straw Dogs," at least to me, isn't close to being one of Peckinpah's masterpieces, but it's a movie that the people who first saw it still remember 40 years later. I doubt that anyone will remember the new one by next month. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesSep 17, 2011
What has changed, however, is the audience consuming it: 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. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanSep 16, 2011
Does Lurie have an ax to grind? And how. Yet if, to some ears, its high-pitched whine nearly drowns out the underlying story at times, why did so many in that preview audience seem deaf to it? Maybe that's Lurie's real point: A culture that feeds on violence -- in real life and on film -- has also inured us to it. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithSep 16, 2011
The main reason to see it is for the hilariously nasty uses it devises for a bear trap, nail gun, etc. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 15, 2011
Mr. Lurie's movie does not quite succeed on its own, though it is pulpy and brutal and at times grotesquely comical. The story does not cohere, and the performances are uneven. But as a piece of film criticism - as a conversation with, and interpretation of, an earlier film - it is intriguing. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 13, 2011
Whereas Peckinpah managed not only to raise hackles but to get under the skin, Lurie manages only the former, which reduces the material to the level of sensation-mongering. Read full review
50
VarietyAndrew BarkerSep 13, 2011
Though competently crafted, Rod Lurie's wholly unnecessary 2011 remake is a film with few notions of its own, and representative of its time only in the commercial sense that home-invasion thrillers are now more prevalent at the multiplex. Read full review
40
EmpireKim NewmanOct 31, 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. The result is a bit of yawn enlivened only by James Woods' delirious bad guy. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovSep 22, 2011
Ultimately, the remake is, at best, rote and, at worst, totally unnecessary. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazineNick SchagerSep 17, 2011
If Peckinpah's original was a rotten plank spiked with rusty nails, Rod Lurie's redo is something closer to a nicely carved Louisville Slugger. Read full review
40
MovielineAlison WillmoreSep 15, 2011
This new version of Straw Dogs, written and directed by Rod Lurie, has been contemporized, sanitized and stripped of all complexity, and what's left is as empty as a used piñata. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen ColeSep 15, 2011
The film has one sly, ominous touch Peckinpah would have liked. David is writing a script on the defence of Stalingrad, a battle that swallowed two million lives. Otherwise, the new version is a vigilante action film bereft of subtlety or restraint. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeySep 15, 2011
It fails as a gripping home-invasion thriller. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineJaime N. ChristleySep 15, 2011
Despite Lurie's part-time efforts to lend the film some sense of place, the impulse to hot-ify everything from Peckinpah's considerably more earthbound original ultimately outpaces his meager good intentions. Read full review
38
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreSep 15, 2011
An exploitation picture built on redneck cliches and big city liberal outrage, it's not all bad. But it is a pretty unpleasant wallow in the obvious. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliSep 15, 2011
Rod Lurie's heated but empty-headed remake re-creates the original's trudge toward savagery but can't re-create its social context - and doesn't bring anything new to the table. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsSep 15, 2011
The original was repulsive but impossible to shake. This remake is pure applause bait, which makes it barbaric in ways Peckinpah would never have dreamed. Read full review
25
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 15, 2011
It's miscast, barely functional in terms of technique, stupid and unnecessary. Other than that…. Read full review
20
Time OutKeith UhlichSep 20, 2011
This one barely musters a pulse. Read full review
12
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisSep 15, 2011
It's a crude, queasy, ugly remake of a crude, queasy, ugly, yet artistically superior 40-year-old Sam Peckinpah movie. Read full review
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