56 out of 67 people found the following review helpful:
Straightheads
SAI81 from from Tonbridge,
28th April, 2007
When they are brutally attacked after a party Alice (Anderson) and Adam (Dyer) are left mentally and physically scarred. A month later the Police have proved uninterested but Alice sees one of her attackers, follows him home, and begins to plot their revenge. I love revenge movies. They speak to a uniquely visceral place in each of us. At their best they pose questions to their audience; would you do the same? Why? Why not? Straightheads is not by any means the revenge movie at it's best. Writer/Director Dan Reed clearly thinks he's saying something with this tripe. He wants to tell us that violence isn't pretty, that it debases us all. Sadly all that Straightheads says is that vengeance may not be pretty, but it sure is funny. Straightheads might be the funniest thing I've seen at the movies this year, which would be fine if it's antecedants were films like Airplane, rather than I Spit On Your Grave. The infamous ISOYG is a fine case in point here, it follows the same cycle of rape revenge as Straightheads but I Spit makes you complicit in everything, the rape, the experience of the rape and the vengeance. Straightheads would dearly love to do this, but can't. With a running time of just 79 minutes (though it feels interminable) it has no space to develop characters. Alice and Adam are both mere ciphers, their relationship is implausible at best, and borders on the utterly risible, because there is no build up to it and after the attack we cut immediately to a month later. There's no sense of closeness, no chemistry, not even the idea that the shared trauma may unite them. What bothers me most about Straightheads is the question of what in the name of all that is holy Gillian Anderson is doing in it. Anderson is a very fine actress, and I think she could do something really interesting in a role like this, but there is less than nothing here for her to work with. Alice's personality changes as to Dan Reed's whims and I can't blame her for her unspeakably poor performance, but that hardly makes it better. Danny Dyer is even worse, he does his usual geezer for most of the film but it's in the absolutely toe-curlingly abysmal final reel that he should seal next years worst actor razzie with a speech about 'an eye for an eye' so poorly delivered your ears may bleed. Just to clear up one thing i know the pervier X-Philes reading will want to know... Yes Gillian shows her breasts... yes they are spectacularly nice, the star turn of the film indeed... in no way is that brief scene worth parting with money to see, seriously, wait for the DVD caps. I know some critics have been offended by Straightheads and I really don't understand why. It's simply not competent enough to be offensive. Clearly Dan Reed likes the rape-revenge genre, enough indeed to compile what amounts to a greatest hits reel, but while he's obviously seen those films it's just as obvious that he hasn't understood them. Really, if you want to see a film in this genre, watch Straw Dogs, watch IRREVERSIBLE, watch I Spit On Your Grave but don't waste what will feel like forever on this excremental addition to the genre.
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