This remade Straw Dogs is actually a decent movie, it's just wholly unnecessary. Director Rod Lurie, best known for political fare like The Contender, has crafted a strict cover version of Sam Peckinpah's more provocative masterpiece. He's aiming for Faulknerian hothouse drama, shooting the picture like it's Scorsese's Cape Fear because, well, Scorsese got away with remaking a famous movie, so he clearly knows something. The problem is, Lurie wants to deal in moral ambiguities, but his stock-in-trade is absolutes.