Legendary boundary pushing movie. What did it bend out of shape? This movie is bursting with plenty of acts of extreme cinematic violence and nastiness. Back in the early 1970’s, this Sam Peckinpah directed movie made censors’ heads swim.
Dustin Hoffman portrays a brainiac who marries a local British girl and elects to live with her in the English countryside to quietly do his work and make her happy. The old house they live in requires a bit of upkeep so the couple decide to employ some local handymen to fix the place up. Seems that Hoffman’s wife, Susan George, was once involved with one of the “workers” and their continued flirtation leads to some very high levels of friction developing. To say the least.
Hoffman, the cerebral, retiring American outsider is contrasted with the crude, “earthy” thugs who take his money, do almost no work repairing his house, and mock and humiliate him in front of his wife who, increasingly, comes to resent her husband for not standing up to these bullies.
The boiling point is reached when Hoffman takes in another outsider after he is accused of murdering one of the locals’ kids. A liquor fueled gang gathers to take back, by force if need be (or not needed), the mentally defective man who they think killed the girl in town. The siege at the timid Hoffman’s farm begins. But Hoffman has a change of attitude after being forced into such a combustible situation. He will fight back.
Beautiful country scenery is on ample display here and Peckinpah’s stylized ballet of cinematic violence plays out in a more logical fashion then in later films such as “The Killer Elite”.
Any way you look at it, you will feel drained by movie’s end.
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