The crew they hire consists of Amy's high school boyfriend, Charlie (ALEXANDER SKARSGARD), and his buddies Norman (RHYS COIRO), Bic (DREW POWELL) and Chris (BILLY LUSH). They're initially nice enough in a southern sort of way, but they don't look highly on David and his big city demeanor. The same holds true for their old football coach, Tom Heddon (JAMES WOODS), who's now the town's raging alcoholic who has it out for a mentally challenged man, Jeremy Niles (DOMINIC PURCELL).

That's despite Jeremy's brother, Daniel (WALTON GOGGINS), trying to keep him out of trouble and war veteran turned town sheriff John Burke (LAZ ALONSO) trying to keep the peace. But little does Tom know that it's his teenage daughter, Janice (WILLA HOLLAND), who's putting the moves on Jeremy. As that plays out, Amy becomes increasingly irritated with David in her opinion that he's not being enough of a man in regard to what's occurring all around them, especially regarding Charlie and his crew. As that builds and eventually comes to a head, David must decide whether to continue his passivism or take matters into his own hands.

And in many cases, that's certainly true as the vast majority of people don't want anything to escalate into violence, particularly of the unbridled variety. Yet, just like people can't completely remove instinct from wild animals (usually resulting in bad news for the owners of exotic "pets"), we can't and probably never will get rid of the fight or flight response programmed into us over tens of thousands of years of existence.

One film that played on that notion, and thus became synonymous with violent cinema, was Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs." That 1971 film was about a peaceful couple (Dustin Hoffman & Susan George) who moved to Cornwall, England and ended up terrorized by a bunch of locals, resulting in the mild-mannered protagonist reverting back to his Cro-Magnon beginnings and going Ezekiel on the bad guys.

The flick was also noted for its graphic rape scene, not just because it was more about violence and control rather than sex (as is usually the case in such attacks), but also because of the ambiguous way the victim reacted to the attack, as if possibly enjoying the act (a point debated endlessly among critics, fans, psychologists and more over the following decades).

The rape scene is still present in the new remake of the film (with the same name and likewise based on Gordon Williams' novel, "The Siege of Trencher's Farm"), but director Rod Lurie ("The Contender," "The Last Castle") has removed the controversy evoking ambiguity of that notorious scene in favor of a straight-out "you push me too far and I'll strike back" vengeance flick. Aside from the setting (that's been moved to Mississippi) and professions of the main couple (now a screenwriter and his actress wife), the story is otherwise pretty much the same.

While that will likely trouble cinematic purists, I don't have problems with remakes of films that very few people are familiar with, let alone actually saw, and that are many decades removed from the original. What may end up hurting the flick a bit, however, are the bevy of small town clichés (which, while sometimes still true in real life, still feel like clichés in filmed form) that Lurie uses to set up the dichotomy between the locals and the big city folk, represented by James Marsden as the intellectual scripter and Kate Bosworth as the hometown girl turned moved away Hollywood actress.

There's the equal worshipping of God and football, the "village idiot," the alcoholic, the seemingly out of place sheriff, and enough rednecks, beer drinking, hunting and more to fill a number of movies set in the deep south. They all have their place for the story, but for those who frequent movie theaters or catch a lot of such product at home, a lot of that is going to feel awfully familiar.

The same holds true for the underlying plot of a decent man pushed too far and eventually going ballistic on those whose attacks have gone from trivially verbal to downright physically dangerous. Since the original flick, there have been plenty of films that have used the same sort of story, all to allow the viewer to cathartically delve out their own comeuppance alongside the protagonist. Others have presented such stories as disturbing, cautionary tales about man's true nature and the use of violence as a means of power and lording over others, be that violently or even sexually.

Lurie seems to be going after both, and viewers will likely respond in different ways. For some, this will just be a straightforward revenge flick designed to have the viewer rooting for the bullied hero to take out the bad guys. For others, it will be a disturbing but maybe even intriguing examination of the pecking order of humans that use whatever tools they may have to control others (which includes Bosworth's character using her body in an attempt to put others in their place who in turn use theirs in a different way to put her back in hers).

For yours truly, I found it a combination of both, a taut psychological thriller that works on both the cerebral and reptilian parts of our brains, including resulting in me actually sweating during the climactic siege, a visceral reaction this hardened reviewer rarely experiences. That's a testament to Lurie's work, and while it might not be a perfect film and certainly not an original one, and certainly isn't for all audiences, it clearly works for what it's aiming to do and be. "Straw Dogs" rates as a 6.5 out of 10.