StraightheadsBy Ross Forbes, Blockbuster.co.uk
Dan Reed’s Straightheads is the Straw Dogs for the next generation. A film that follows the tragic experience of two individuals and explores the repercussions as they take revenge on those who have wronged them.
Gillian Anderson plays Alice, a single woman who asks her home security installer Adam (
Danny Dyer) to go to a business party with her. While at the party the two of them hit it off and realise that they are attracted to one another.
On the return trip from the party, they are involved in an accident; they hit a deer and are forced to stop. While they are in the process of removing the carcass from the road, they are approached by a group of men who launch into an unprovoked attack on Adam and then subject Alice to a brutal sexual assault.
The next morning Alice and Adam awake in the woods, and start to recover from their ordeal. Alice finds an item that was dropped during her assault by one of her attackers, it is a way of tracking him down and it is at this point that she decides that she is not going to stop until she has taken her revenge on the men that did this to the two of them
Gillian Anderson’s performance as Alice is a far cry away from the cynical Scully of
the X-Files, after the assault her eyes are cold and almost dead; Anderson’s character becomes focused on revenge and nothing will stop her. In a change of role, Danny Dyer does not play a gung-ho character, but almost acts as Alice’s moral anchor by constantly questioning her actions even though he has been so horrendously scarred during his assault that he may lose an eye.
The balance of the two characters tips slowly as the film progresses, from what almost starts out in a
Macbeth style where Alice is constantly trying to push the timid Adam to follow in her murderous footsteps, she later begins to recoil from the anger that she has awoken in him and then begins to questions her own actions. All which lead towards an inevitable bloody conclusion
Where as in the film Straw Dogs the tension builds slowly through to the violent third act, Straightheads on the other hand begins with the violence and then trawls through the emotional aftermath. Straightheads is a stylishly cold film, and really hits home hard as the characters are not cops, or super humans, but ordinary every day people. It poses the question, what would you do? How far would you go?
What other people say:
”Brutal… disturbing…horrifying”Film Review
”A Savage Brit Thriller”Nuts
”More X Rated than X-Files, has all the pornographic ingredients of a first rate cult thriller. The Times
”Anderson is Excellent”LondonLite
Dyer and Anderson are strong and convincing in this disturbing, raw and revengeful film.Blagmagazine
”Seductive and Chilling” Sight and Sound
”Nerve-wracking and relentless, this is the ultimate in high tension cinema!”Bizarre
”A must see”Clash
”Stylish”
Evening Standard
”Intriguing” Sunday Mirror
”Truly eye watering” The Sun