STRAW DOGS (Rated R)

Sam Peckinpah’s controversial 1971 film “Straw Dogs” captured the scary intensity of a story about shocking violence and the exploration of the darkest human behavior.

Now director and screenwriter Rod Lurie updates Peckinpah’s tale of psychological terror by moving its setting from rural England to a small town in the Deep South.

This review will skip the comparisons with the original because the Peckinpah classic is 40 years old and today’s audience is not likely familiar with it anyway.

The setting of Blackwater, Mississippi is not the bucolic paradise that it appears to be at first glance. It’s immediately obvious that the central figure is a fish-out-of-water.

David Sumner (James Marsden), a bespectacled Hollywood screenwriter, and his actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) move to her small hometown in the South after her father’s death.

David’s first visit to Blackie’s bar should have been enough of a clue to this Harvard-educated country club sort of intellectual that he was entering hostile territory.

But to make matters worse, David seemingly thinks it is a good idea to hire Amy’s former boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard) and his crew of redneck hillbillies to perform construction work on their dilapidated barn.

David and Amy take up residence in the sturdy family farmhouse. He views it as the perfect place to work on his screenplay about the pivotal Battle of Stalingrad during World War II.

While the locals mostly drive pickups and standard American sedans, David rides around in his vintage Jaguar convertible, as if he were on his way to lunch at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

David is something of a squish that smiles softly and tries too hard to be engaging, but comes across as a wimpy nerd. His effete attitude shines through when he tries to order a Bud Light in the midst of a hard-drinking crowd.

On the other hand, David’s wife, having once been the town’s beauty queen and prominent cheerleader, slips back into being the hometown celebrity, even if her old friends are jealous.

But Amy has enough good sense to insist that they drive her father’s old car instead of the Jaguar when attending to the town’s Friday night football game ritual.

Meanwhile, tensions build in the Sumner marriage and old conflicts re-emerge with the locals, notably when Charlie brings a primal menace to the jobsite, leering at the sweaty Amy when she goes jogging braless.

The sense of intimidation grows when Charlie and his crew, including former football teammates Bic (Drew Powell), Norman (Rhys Coiro) and Chris (Billy Lush) push the limits of David’s tolerance.

Tension builds slowly at first, as Charlie and the gang annoy David by blasting loud music and flaunting their lackadaisical work ethic, leaving work early to go hunting.

One of the workers has no problem with walking into the Sumner house uninvited, retrieving beers from the refrigerator and then complaining that they are not cold enough.

Meanwhile, a subplot involves former football coach Tom Heddon (James Woods), a violent, angry drunk, who gets absolutely obsessed that his teenage daughter has caught the attention of the mentally challenged Jeremy (Dominic Purcell).

When the coach’s daughter goes missing, Heddon takes the law into his own hands, enlisting Charlie and his boys to help him search for her and setting into motion a series of events that ultimately leads to an explosively violent confrontation.

Leading up to the extremely brutal and violent climactic showdown at the farmhouse, it appears that both David and Amy had made a series of bad decisions that aggravate the situation.

To what purpose does the teasingly sexy Amy decide to suggestively flash Charlie and his crew after taking a shower? It’s red meat thrown to the wolves.

What makes David so obliviously accommodating to Charlie and his buddies that he hires them in the first place and then decides to go hunting with them in the off-season to prove his manhood?

Despite the mistakes made by the Sumners, it is abundantly clear that director/screenwriter Lurie expects the audience to cheer David’s ultimate transformation into fierce protector of his wife and the farmhouse.

The central actors are engaging, complex characters. Though James Woods gives another over-the-top performance, he is something to behold.

“Straw Dogs” may lack the necessary subtlety and nuance, as well as psychological ambiguity, but it delivers the goods on vengeful violence. That may be enough for contemporary filmgoers.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.