"Straightheads" is British gangster slang for "those who live outside the
criminal life." Gillian Anderson and Danny Dyer play a couple of
straightheads who are pushed across the line into crooked territory. Dyer
portrays a working-class guy who makes his living installing security
systems, and the installation in well-to-do Gillian's house comes with a
bonus - Gillian herself. When he tests the closed circuit television, he's
surprised to see her undressing, although certainly aware that he must be
watching.
They somehow manage to form an
unlikely couple, and Gillian takes her new prol boyfriend to a posh weekend in the Shropshire
countryside. That proves to be a mistake on many levels. First, all of
her stuffy friends condescend to him. Second, as the couple escapes the stifling
atmosphere of the aristocrats, they find that the local prols are far worse
company. Gillian and Danny are beset by some violent rural yokels who rape
her and
beat him so hard that he loses the use of one eye, as well as the ability to do his manly duties.
The victims soon come to realize that they will never receive any form of justice
through the legal process, but a fortuitous circumstance gives them a way to
track down the identity of the yobs who hurt them, so they resolve to
extract their own "justice" ... read "revenge." Between Danny's technical
wizardry and Gillian's skill with a firearm, they eventually manage to take violent
retribution.
The film became notorious in the UK for its use of extremely
violent situations to manipulate and involve its viewers, but in terms of character
development and audience identification, the violence can be
justified contextually. Gillian was cold and unsympathetic when she was a straighthead, and she easily takes to her new role as a violent huntress.
Since she goes so far as to use the barrel of the rifle for ... um ... more than just sharpshooting, it would be virtually impossible to identify with her,
even though she feels guilt for having done what she did, unless
we gain some sympathy by witnessing the brutal details of her earlier abuse
at the hands of her victims. In essence, the film comes from the same school
of emotion-driven feminist revenge as the notorious B-picture I Spit on Your
Grave, mixed with a healthy dose of Peckinpaugh's Straw Dogs, as updated for
the new millennium.
Straightheads is not an exploitation movie. It is a film with exploitation elements, including sex, nudity and
some extreme violence, but it's more than an exploitation film. It
shows us something about the nature of violence, our capacity for it, and
our reaction to it. It demonstrates how easily we can turn to violence when
provoked, and it shows how we can actually sympathize with others when they
do - at least up to a point. Where the film differs from the usual Charles
Bronson film is that we don't really keep cheering the execution of the
revenge. Oh, we may be rooting for Gillian and Danny at the outset of the
hunt, but when we see their extreme measures in detail, our cheers die out
and we are left with the realization that violence and revenge can be too
ugly even when exerted upon those who truly deserve comeuppance. In that sense, the documentary-style
intensity is entirely necessary to leave us feeling
our own guilt at having wanted to see an awful revenge in the first place.
We're supposed to get that feeling of, "I didn't realize it would be like
this. This isn't what I wanted. Enough already."
The film's level of explicitness is appropriate in context. There is a time
(Gillian's rape) when the point has been made and the director cuts away, and
there is another time (an eye being gouged out) when the bloody action is
actually off-camera. Gillian's rape scene shows no flesh at all, and even the
counter-rape with the rifle was done mostly
with suggestion, keeping the nudity and penetration again off-camera. In fact, I don't think
the violence could have been toned down much more without losing the
effectiveness of the scenes. If the revenge were to be sanitized to
typical Hollywood levels, or glamorized to the comic book level of A History of
Violence, or if the tone of the film were jokey like a Guy Richie
gangster
film, it would not be possible for Straightheads to deliver the same impact. The
emotional power of the film resides in the fact that we seem to be watching real violence, not
film violence.
In summary, I believe that the film's critics seem to have overreacted to
the violence. If the director had wanted to show more explicit gore, it
would have been a simple matter to do so. He did not. In essence, the
critics were not objecting so much to the director's handling of situations
as they were to the nature of the situations themselves. Well, life ain't
always pretty, lads. Ugly shit happens. And I don't remember any rule book
which says the ugly matters are off-limits to filmmakers. As I see it, one must acknowledge this
film's effectiveness at portraying the ugliness accurately, and involving the audience
in it. That is, after all, one of the most
basic things a director is supposed to accomplish. Unfortunately, it's one
of those films where you wish it was not as effective as it is. If you have
seen I Spit on Your Grave, you can probably remember how you got emotionally
involved in one way or another, despite the amateurish acting and production
values. Imagine how much more effective that film could have been if the
star had been Agent Scully and it had been made by an experienced
documentary director who was willing to raise the film's brutality to a
level bordering on grisly dark comedy. Well, there you have imagined Straightheads,
a revenge drama in which the long-awaited revenge seems excessive when we
finally get to it. Even one of the protagonists (Gillian) sees that matters
have gone too far, but the other (Danny) gets a taste for revenge, and when
he does we
are shocked by the realization that violence is so similar to sex in one
fundamental way - it comes much easier to people after their cherries are
broken. That realization is followed by the uncomfortable feeling that just
about any of us could cross the line from straight- to crookedhead.
At 80 minutes including credits, Straightheads is a lot like Hobbes's
view of the life of man: nasty, brutish and short. Can I justify the film's ugliness? Yes, I
am convinced of it. Do I want to watch the film again? No.
Absolutely not. I didn't enjoy it the first time
through. But then again, I wasn't supposed to.
