Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release Straw Dogs on Blu-ray next month. Written and directed by Rod Lurie (The Contender), this remake of director Sam Peckinpah's controversial thriller stars James Marsden (The Notebook) and Kate Bosworth (Superman Returns) as David and Amy Sumner, a young couple who suffer increasingly vicious harassment when they move to a small Southern town. Chief among their aggressors is Charlie Venner (Alexander Skarsgård, True Blood), a menacing local handyman and Amy's high-school sweetheart.
In addition to Marsden, Bosworth, and Skarsgård, the film features an impressive supporting cast that includes James Woods (Videodrome), Dominic Purcell (Prison Break), Rhys Coiro (Entourage), Laz Alonso (Miracle at St. Anna), and Walton Goggins (Justified).
Sony's Blu-ray presents Straw Dogs in its original aspect ratio of 2.39:1 with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. The disc also contains the following bonus supplements:
Commentary with writer/director Rod Lurie
Four behind-the-scenes featurettes:
- Courting Controversy: Remaking a Classic
- The Dynamics of Power: The Ensemble
- Inside the Siege: The Ultimate Showdown
- Creating the Sumner House: The Production Design
Straw Dogs is expected to street on December 20th.
I've been curious about this film. I've never seen the original version either; it would make an interesting comparison. I hope Criterion upgrades its edition of the original to blu sooner rather than later.
Terrible movie when compared to the original.
I imagine some people would like the Psycho remake if they had never seen the original.
Remakes are & s/b under more pressure to justify their existence. This one fails.
The original is a pure classic so well acted by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George (whatever happened to her?). The Blu-ray was on sale at "Best Buy" a couple of weeks ago so I picked it up.
Hoping this remake is as good but by the sounds of these comments I am going to be disappointed.
Don't say you've haven't been warned! Everybody couldn't be wrong, how bad this movie is. Typically the originals are always better than the remakes. There's a reason why it's coming to home video so fast because the movie is not any good.
I picked up the original just before Halloween when Best Buy had it on sale for $9.99. Honestly I don't see what all the fuss is over. It was pretty boring until the last 30 minutes and by that time Dustin Hoffmans character had proven to be such a huge douche I was hoping he would get the crap beat out of him or worse. Think I'll Netflix the remake because it can't be any worse.
This movie was so unnecessary. The director removed all of the controversial elements of the original to make his own modern, and of course dumbed down version. Why have any kind of suspenseful build up, character development or subtext when you can just spell everything out with a crayon and simplify things for the general audience.
