Visceral, disturbing: 'Straw Dogs' remake better than the first

This new version of Straw Dogs is a reasonably close adaptation of the 1971 film by Sam Peckinpah. Change the location from England to Mississippi, change a mathematician into a screenwriter, keep the bear trap and the cat found strangled, and it tells the same story. It is every bit as violent. I found it visceral, disturbing and well made.

James Marsden and Kate Bosworth star in the roles originally played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, as an intellectual and his wife who move to a rural area where he can work undisturbed. There is something about this man and his sexy wife that disturbs the locals down at the pub, and what begins as a subtle competition over territorial rights (in the Darwinian sense) escalates implacably into a full-blown lethal struggle. The lesson learned is that the egghead contains the possibility of using great violence when his home and wife are threatened. At the beginning he doesn't know that. Full review.