“If you go down to the woods tonight, carry a big-ass gun” is the most cogent take-away from the tepid and confused new remake of Sam Peckinpah’s controversial classic, “Straw Dogs.”
James Marsden plays David Sumner, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, who moves cross-country with his wife Amy (Kate Bosworth), a TV actress returning to her father’s abandoned home in the backwoods of Mississippi.
He spends his days working on a screenplay about the siege of Stalingrad while she’s bored, jogging bra-less before a crew of local rednecks when she’s not petting her cat.
Among the crew is Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård), ex-quarterback of the revered local high school team.