Straw Dogs

Sam Peckinpah’s fascination with human brutality was never so blazingly controversial than this 1971 revenge thriller, starring Dustin Hoffman as a milquetoast professor who confronts his capacity for violent revenge when his wife is attacked by local hooligans. At the time, it prompted critic Pauline Kael to call him a fascist director, and it’s no less disturbing today. But it cannot be easily dismissed as exploitation; it’s too technically brilliant, and Peckinpah’s subtle and layered script refuses to give the viewer a character to safely identify with. The physical violence is, if anything, less disturbing than the emotional shocks—most infamously, a rape scene that blurs into seduction, but also because of the implied idea that killing is not just a necessary evil but an enjoyable one. Perhaps it’s an indefensible film, perhaps not. But like Hitler’s documentarian Leni Riefenstahl, Peckinpah’s ideas go deeper than the images, and demand to be met first on their own terms if they’re going to be shot down.