Straightheads

UK, 2007. Directed by Dan Reed. Gillian Anderson, Danny Dyer, Anthony Calf, Francesca Fowler, Ralph Brown, Steven Robertson.

City businesswoman (Anderson) takes a fancy to the young man (Dyer) who’s installing a surveillance alarm system in her apartment and invites him to accompany her to her boss’s house party in the country. Afterwards they have sex in the grounds before starting the drive home. On the way she hits a deer and they are attacked by three locals – she is raped and he is badly beaten up. The subsequent story is a tale of revenge, much of it unbelievable and none of it very interesting. It’s also extremely brutal, both in its depiction of the rape and the subsequent violence it begets. Along the way there are hints that some insights about the nature of violence and its effects upon the human condition were intended, but by the end of the film it doesn’t feel like anything profound has been said – actually I was rather relieved it was over. Apart from the nasty taste left by its subject matter, all the characters are poorly drawn and, at times seem very muddled. Gillian Anderson handles her role with the capability one has come to expect of her but is limited by the script. Danny Dyer, an actor with a limited range at the best of times, plays a version of the persona for which he’s known, but again, the writing fails him. For people who have had such a frightful experience I found I had little sympathy for either of them, probably because no-one seems to have tried to make them particularly likeable characters in the first place. Straw Dogs is sometimes mentioned in the context of this film, presumably because it also features violence, rape and country yokels, but this is a far cry from anything Sam Peckinpah would have produced.