Straightheads [DVD] [2007]

Not for weak stomachs, this is a deliberately challenging and harsh 'eye for an eye' picture. Gillian Anderson and Danny Dyer make for an intruiging couple as Alice and Adam. She's a high flyer. He fits TVs. But when she invites him on a date to a lavish country house party, and the two end up getting together, it looks like things couldn't go much better.
They couldn't. It's horrendously downhill from there as they offend a local driver and he decides to set his psychotic friends on them in order to keep their predatory attentions away from his own daughter.
Suddenly Adam and Alice find their night going to hell, as Adam is savagely beaten half to death, and Alice is gang raped.
Recovering back in her lavish flat, it looks as if the couple might manage to put the events behind them, until Alice runs across knowledge of where the attackers live, and realises that she can't let go...worse, that she needs revenge and won't rest until she's got it...
This turns into a very harsh and challenging film of conflicting goals, tested morals, and a study of how far people can go when driven by rage.
As Adam and Alice close in on their prey, it's obvious that maybe their sanity is cracking along with their bonds.
It's a highly dramatic film. Gillian Anderson is superb as Alice, and Danny Dyer is more serious, less cheeky chappy than usual. As a result they make a fascinating pairing of age difference and culture clash. There's also friction about just how far they should go, which is acted believably and feels very realistic.
The ending, when it comes, is a violent, traumatic and emotionally cathartic climax that is hard to watch but also not unexpected. What is unexpected is the way the different characters react. It's brutal and bleak, and emotionally draining, and you may feel a little uncomfortable afterwards. But any harsh exploitation film that's trying to make an important point should perhaps make you feel that way.

Straightheads is the story about a successful, controlling career woman, Alice, played by Gillian Anderson, who decides to take her young alarm man, Adam, played by Danny Dyer, on a date.

However both Adam and Alice are assaulted on the way home, following which their lives become entwined, with both obsessed with how they were hurt, unable to speak of it to others. When Alice discovers where one of the attackers lives, she persuades Adam to consider revenge.

The film is not so much about revenge as about violence, in particular how violence begets violence. It explores themes of war indirectly, including how armies protect, and fail to protect, soldiers from the dehumanising effect of perpetrating violence. Although not set in a war zone, many of the characters have a military background - including Alice's father.

It is also a film about moral contingencies, about how it is impossible to judge another's actions by absolute standards, unless you have been in the same situation.

A film about violence that failed to show that violence would be cheating, but this film is never gratuitous or voyeuristic. We understand what happened to Alice and Adam, how the attack felt, how it damaged them, by observing the aftermath it leaves behind.

Set in idyllic English countryside, the film is beautifully shot and elegantly directed.

Anderson and Dyer give brilliant, understated performances, who undergo a real journey in the course of the film. They are ably supported by the rest of the cast.

An pertinent film, that deserves viewing.

I usually read the reviews before I decide to view the film particularly if I have never heard of it. The reviews were mixed.

I like a good revenge film as it is something we have all thought about but never have the guts to do.

In this case a successful career woman takes up with a much younger man who has just happened to come round and fit safety devices in her house. She is the super sexy and sophisticated business woman and he watches her undress and keeps the clip. She knows she is being watched and then decides to go out with him. She takes him to a party. They hardly know each other but after the party they are attacked on the way home. He is badly injured and she is raped. The violence is not graphic.

Their lives are bound together by the tragedy and they try to recover. Her father dies and she moves back to the area where the attack took place.

One day she spots one of her attackers. There are times in the film when you jump with surprise and shock and that keeps you watching. When she spots her attacker she decides on revenge but the younger lover is not so keen.

If the film has any faults it is the fact that you know so little about the couple that you are no drawn into to be sympathetic of their plight. The attackers are shadowy figures and you know very little about them

You do not have the opportunity to hate them and the main one who raped her is treated sympathetically as he explains why he did it.

In a revenge film you want to have total sympathy wit the victims and total hatred for the attackers. In this film you are torn as you do not know enough about each.
Also normally you are encouraged to relish the end of each of the baddies but this does not happen here.

If you want gratuitous sex and violence this isn't for you . The sex is tasteful and the violence is mainly off camera.

I liked Gillian Anderson's convincing English accent but I think she did attend an English boarding school. Danny Dyer the young love was less convincing but maybe I am wrong and that is exactly how a 23 year old alarm man caught up in a revenge story with an older woman would react.

I liked it and it is definitely worth a watch. The parts I found disturbing were not the overtly violent or sexy bits.

Again I like these films because they are set in Britain and are therefore more realistic and disturbing.If they are set in the mean streets of the US they are just films. unlike some reviews this is exactly the sort of things are lottery money should be spent on. We have enough crumbling churches if people wants to restore them. The British film industry needs funding and maybe like the Olympics we will be up there again.