Straightheads starts as successful London businesswoman Alice Comfort (Gillian Anderson) talks her security installation guy Adam (Danny Dyer) into attending a big party at her boss's house out in the country, he agrees to go along. While making their way home an unsavoury road rage incident happens on a isolated country road & the incident quickly escalates, Adam is beaten up while Alice is bent over the bonnet of her car & gang raped. For some reason they keep the rape a secret from the police & when by coincidence Alice sees one of her attackers again she & Adam decide to dish out a little of their own sort of justice...
Retitled to Closure in the US this British production was written & directed by Dan Reed & just from the plot synopsis one could be mistaken for thinking Straightheads (the worst film title this Century...) would pan out like a modern retelling of such rape revenge exploitation films such as Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), I Spit on Your Grave (1980) or the Death Wish series as big city folk run into several sadistic backwoods inhabitants who decide to have some fun with them before the city folks toughen-up & seek revenge but in actuality it's closer in tone to something like Bad Lieutenant (1992) with it's very stark & minimalistic tone & feel. Like in Bad Lieutenant there's quite a bit of soul searching as the raped eventually forgives the rapist & even saves his life in a rather unsatisfactory ending. Straightheads is an extremely short film clocking in at under 80 minutes & despite such a short running time it's a surprisingly barren & empty film that drags. After the initial rape & attack nothing really happens for ages until an incredibly abrupt ending that I didn't like one bit, I mean I just can't like a rape revenge flick in which the woman who has been raped actually begs for her attackers life to be spared! There's little in the way of effective violence or exploitation which again considering the theme of the film has to be a disappointment. I had a real problem with the character's here, I didn't buy a successful city businesswoman like Alice falling for a twenty something kid at all & within a couple of hours of meeting him Alice is introducing him to her boss, having sex with him & letting him move into her flat. It just didn't ring true to me at all, what would she see in him exactly? Also why did she not tell the police she was raped? No satisfactory answer was ever given as far as I was concerned. Both character's have little in the way of meaningful dialogue, we never really get to know who they are & the rapists & attackers don't come across any better with a pointless little speech at the end in which we are meant to feel some sort of sympathy for the guy. Then there are the highly unlikely coincidences like the way Alice just happens to run into her attacker again & they way that her dad's house is so conveniently only a couple of miles from her attackers house.
I like a good rape revenge exploitation flick & maybe that's my problem with Straightheads because it doesn't really play out to genre expectations, it's far too drama heavy without ever really being that dramatic or moving. The exploitation elements are weak, the rape is not graphic neither is the revenge part of the film. I suppose the most exploitative part is when Anderson anally rapes her rapist with the barrel of her rifle, apart from that the violence is largely off screen & amounts to nothing more than some blood splatter on a window. The film has a dark cold look & tone to it, there's not much colour to the picture & to show & highlight the obvious contrast between the modern clean affluent London against the dirty rustic nature of the English countryside was surely a deliberate decision on the filmmakers part.
Partly funded by National Lottery money Straightheads had a supposed budget of about £1,800,000 & was filmed in a month at the end of 2005 although remained unreleased until mid 2007. Filmed in London & the West Midlands including Worcestershire which is where I live! Not often we get films shot around here I can tell you. The acting is pretty poor in my opinion, no-one seems that interested & what Gillian Anderson is doing in this I will never know although fans of hers take note that she does go topless in this, Danny Dyer as her toy-boy love interest is terrible.
Straightheads could have been a great piece of rape revenge exploitation in the vein of Straw Dogs & I Spit on Your Grave but the poorly written character's & lack of any satisfying revenge means it's a bit of a wasted opportunity although having said that it's alright for what it is, at least it's short & where else are you going to see Gillian Anderson anally rape a guy with the barrel of a rifle?
Retitled to Closure in the US this British production was written & directed by Dan Reed & just from the plot synopsis one could be mistaken for thinking Straightheads (the worst film title this Century...) would pan out like a modern retelling of such rape revenge exploitation films such as Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), I Spit on Your Grave (1980) or the Death Wish series as big city folk run into several sadistic backwoods inhabitants who decide to have some fun with them before the city folks toughen-up & seek revenge but in actuality it's closer in tone to something like Bad Lieutenant (1992) with it's very stark & minimalistic tone & feel. Like in Bad Lieutenant there's quite a bit of soul searching as the raped eventually forgives the rapist & even saves his life in a rather unsatisfactory ending. Straightheads is an extremely short film clocking in at under 80 minutes & despite such a short running time it's a surprisingly barren & empty film that drags. After the initial rape & attack nothing really happens for ages until an incredibly abrupt ending that I didn't like one bit, I mean I just can't like a rape revenge flick in which the woman who has been raped actually begs for her attackers life to be spared! There's little in the way of effective violence or exploitation which again considering the theme of the film has to be a disappointment. I had a real problem with the character's here, I didn't buy a successful city businesswoman like Alice falling for a twenty something kid at all & within a couple of hours of meeting him Alice is introducing him to her boss, having sex with him & letting him move into her flat. It just didn't ring true to me at all, what would she see in him exactly? Also why did she not tell the police she was raped? No satisfactory answer was ever given as far as I was concerned. Both character's have little in the way of meaningful dialogue, we never really get to know who they are & the rapists & attackers don't come across any better with a pointless little speech at the end in which we are meant to feel some sort of sympathy for the guy. Then there are the highly unlikely coincidences like the way Alice just happens to run into her attacker again & they way that her dad's house is so conveniently only a couple of miles from her attackers house.
I like a good rape revenge exploitation flick & maybe that's my problem with Straightheads because it doesn't really play out to genre expectations, it's far too drama heavy without ever really being that dramatic or moving. The exploitation elements are weak, the rape is not graphic neither is the revenge part of the film. I suppose the most exploitative part is when Anderson anally rapes her rapist with the barrel of her rifle, apart from that the violence is largely off screen & amounts to nothing more than some blood splatter on a window. The film has a dark cold look & tone to it, there's not much colour to the picture & to show & highlight the obvious contrast between the modern clean affluent London against the dirty rustic nature of the English countryside was surely a deliberate decision on the filmmakers part.
Partly funded by National Lottery money Straightheads had a supposed budget of about £1,800,000 & was filmed in a month at the end of 2005 although remained unreleased until mid 2007. Filmed in London & the West Midlands including Worcestershire which is where I live! Not often we get films shot around here I can tell you. The acting is pretty poor in my opinion, no-one seems that interested & what Gillian Anderson is doing in this I will never know although fans of hers take note that she does go topless in this, Danny Dyer as her toy-boy love interest is terrible.
Straightheads could have been a great piece of rape revenge exploitation in the vein of Straw Dogs & I Spit on Your Grave but the poorly written character's & lack of any satisfying revenge means it's a bit of a wasted opportunity although having said that it's alright for what it is, at least it's short & where else are you going to see Gillian Anderson anally rape a guy with the barrel of a rifle?