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
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
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