Straw Dogs (2011)

Straw Dogs is an artful provocation - a meditation on masculinity and societal mores in the guise of an explosive thriller.

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.

Peckinpah rubbed our noses in the bloodlust. Lurie invites objectivity. He gets strong, complex performances from actors who won't be painted into corners.

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.

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.