Brad reviews STRAW DOGS (2011), starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard and James Woods!

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Bradley Crain

After reading a lot of negative reviews, I went into this 2011 remake of Sam Peckinpah’s STRAW DOGS expecting to not like it. I only bought the DVD because I’m a James Woods super-fan and completist. The good thing about that lowering of expectations, though, is that in my first viewing (in 2026) I was able to focus on the movie itself rather than in comparison to the original. After watching it, I would never argue that this version is a great movie, but I did find myself enjoying it more than I thought I would.

David and Amy Sumner (James Marsden and Kate Bosworth) arrive in her childhood hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi, where David plans to work on a screenplay while they fix up her old family home. David’s a successful Hollywood screenwriter, but he’s not tough at all, which is at odds with the small town football and southern deer-hunting culture he now finds himself in. Amy, who’s had some success as an actress, has a history with many of the people in town, especially her old boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard). Eventually that history turns into something much more dangerous than you would ever imagine (if you hadn’t seen the original).

Because I’ve only seen the original film once or twice in my currently 52-year-old life, I don’t necessarily hold it as some sort of untouchable masterpiece of cinema, and I can like how this version of STRAW DOGS builds its tension. There are definitely some moments where I found myself wondering what the hell David and Amy were thinking. David seems intent on giving the local yokels every possible opportunity to walk all over him. Then again, as a person who always tries to be nice and avoid a fight, I don’t know how much different I would have been. I would hope that if my wife and entire livelihood was being threatened, however, I’d find the intestinal fortitude to do whatever it takes to protect them and myself. David eventually does find that nature within himself.

Amy’s unexplained behavior is even worse. After being offended that the locals ogle her when she’s exercising, she decides the appropriate response is taking her top off purposely in front of an open window so those same locals can see. While I can unequivocally state that there’s never any excuse for violence against women among rational people, the problem is that these are irrational people who don’t play by the rules of society. This is one of those cases where the only possible explanation for Amy’s behavior is because the screenplay needed her to do it. Even when the worst case scenario eventually plays out, the despicable behavior taps into our basic instincts and we want to see vengeance served.

James Marsden and Kate Bosworth are okay as David and Amy. Their characters aren’t particularly engaging, but you can’t help but pull for them in comparison to those around them. Alexander Skarsgard is awkward and creepy as Charlie, Amy’s old boyfriend. I loved him as the powerful vampire in the HBO series TRUE BLOOD. He’s something totally different here, and he eventually goes so far off the reservation you can’t help but want him to get his comeuppance. Of course, I wanted to watch the movie because of James Woods, who plays Tom Heddon, a former local high school football coach who seems to be just a drunk at the bar these days. It turns out that he’s loud, mean and incredibly nasty. In a history of playing vicious bastards, this character plays out as one of his worst. It’s an incredible performance just a couple of years before, as Woods has said, his unapologetically conservative political views would essentially get him blackballed from Hollywood.

The final scenes are extremely violent, and based on what we’ve seen, it’s hard not to feel that the violence is justified. It’s ugly, but I won’t deny that I wasn’t emotionally moved to see it. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert would say that he preferred this remake to the original. I won’t go that far, but that’s a pretty strong indicator that this film shouldn’t be dismissed just because most won’t find it to be as good as the original. What it is is a mean, violent thriller with some strong performances, especially from Skarsgard and Woods. If you’re willing to forget that it’s a remake of a superior film from 40 years earlier, you just may enjoy it!

The Eric Roberts Collection: Assault on Wall Street (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Assault on Wall Street tells the story of Jim Braxford (Dominic Purcell), a security guard who loses all of his money due to some bad investments that he had no control over and whose wife, Rosie (Erin Karpluk), kills herself rather than continue her expensive medical treatments. Jim snaps and, after listening to a bunch of angry people on MSNBC, he decides to take violent vengeance on Wall Street, targeting brokers and CEOs and ultimately launching an all-out assault on a firm owned by the cartoonishly evil Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard).

Full of anti-capitalist rhetoric and heavy-handed plot developments, Assault on Wall Street finds director Uwe Boll in a political mood. Because the film deals with economic anxiety to which everyone can relate, this film is slightly more effective than Boll’s usual films but that still doesn’t mean that it’s particularly good. It’s one of those films that takes forever to get where it’s going and the film also suffers due to Boll’s confounding decision to cast Dominic Purcell in the lead role. The blank-eyed, flat-voice Purcell gives such a spectacularly dull performance that one wonders if he was constructed out of charisma anti-matter. It doesn’t help that Purcell’s three best friends are played Edward Furlong, Michael Pare, and Keith David, all of whom come across like they would have been a better pick for the lead role.

The film ends with a spate of violence that I remember that I found to be a bit shocking when I first saw the film on cable in 2013. Of course, today, such violence has been normalized and is often celebrated on social media. I imagine that members of the creepy Luigi death cult would probably claim that Jim Braxford didn’t go far enough in his murder spree.

Two of my favorites, Eric Roberts and Lochlyn Munro, have supporting roles in this film. Munro is Jim’s broker, who makes the mistake of complaining about how he had to cancel his planned vacation to Barbados as a result of the economic meltdown. Roberts plays the lawyer who agrees to help Jim get justice but who ultimately proves to be no help at all. Both of them are memorable in their small roles, which once again leaves us to wonder why, with all the talent available, Uwe Boll apparently decided to make Dominic Purcell his muse. That was a bad investment.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Film Review: Assassin (dir by Jesse Atlas)

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Assassin tells the story of Alexa (Nomzamo Mbatha), a soldier whose husband (Mustafa Shakir) was a member of secret government program in which people would allow their minds to be transferred into the bodies of strangers so that those strangers could then be used to assassinate America’s enemies. When Alexa’s husband ends up in a coma as a result of trying to assassinate Adrian (Dominic Purcell), Alexa is forcefully recruited into the program and is sent to complete her husband’s mission.

That may sound like it would make for an intriguing film but Assassin is pretty dull. Neither Nomzamo Mbatha nor Dominic Purcell give particularly interesting performances and the film’s plot and themes were far better explored in Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor. Watching the film, I found it impossible to have much sympathy for Alexa because she was not only murdering people but she was also ruining the lives of the innocent people who she ended up possessing. The fact that her husband was in a coma didn’t excuse any of that. If anything it made Alexa even less sympathetic. After seeing what being an assassin did to her husband, why would Alexa want any of that?

Towards the end of the film, one of Alexa’s targets realizes that Alexa is possessing someone else’s body. Alexa’s handler announces that she’s going to pull Alexa out of the body and then “get the wet team to take this guy out.” If you have a team that can do it, why are you wasting time with possessing other people’s bodies? Why would you decide to use the most complicated plan available when you could just simply send in a team and or have a drone blow up the guy’s house? It’s almost as if the program is designed to be too complex to work. As I watched the film, I suddenly started to understand why the CIA was never able to take out Castro. Sometimes, people just make things complicated for no reason.

Sadly, Assassin is also the final film of Bruce Willis. Willis plays Valmora, the guy who is in charge of the Assassin program. As was typical of Willis’s final films, he only gets a few minutes of screen time and he spends most of that time either sitting down or standing in a corner. Willis, even though he obviously wasn’t in the best of health when he shot this film, still projects enough natural authority to be believable as Valmora. Even though it’s obvious that he’s repeating lines that were fed to him just a few minutes before shooting, Willis still gives the most (and perhaps only) credible performance in the film.

Assassin is a sad note for Bruce Willis to go out on. Of Willis’s final batch of films, the best were Gasoline Alley, Corrective Measures, and Wire Room. Assassin, however, is just dull and anyone tempted to watch it just because of Willis’s presence would be better served to go rewatch Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense, 12 Monkeys, or …. well, really, any other movie that Bruce Willis ever appeared in. Bruce Willis was one of our greatest movie stars and nothing, not even films like Assassin, can change that.

Trailer: Killer Elite (Theatrical)

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Arleigh

Not to be confused with the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film about elite assassins, this 2011 action-thriller is purported to be based on the true life story that was the basis for the controversial novel, The Feather Men, by British author Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The film has quite the cast of testosterone with Jason Statham, Robert DeNiro and Clive Owen, but also Dominic Purcell and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.

This action film is the first full-length feature for the Northern-Irish filmmaker Gary McKendry whose short film, Everything in This Country Must, was nominated for Best Live-Action Short Film for the 77th Academy Awards. It’s going to be interesting how this first major production turns out. One thing for sure the trailer made some great use of the classic Scorpion heavy metal anthem, “Rock You Like a Hurricane”. That use alone made this trailer a success in making me want to see this film.