I first saw this movie under the name "straight heads" I think this movie was decent. Nice performance from Gillian Anderson not so much from the male lead Danny Dyer. I liked the story of a women and guy who gets attacked after attending a party and then they plot revenge against the gang that attacked them. I have seen some reviews complaining about how real some of the scenes were. However, I think they were necessary to the story. The movie was well written and I think good direction. Gillian Anderson does a very good job in this movie. She portrays the part of a mid aged women who is brutalized in an attack and they decides to extract revenge on them when she discovers were one of the gang lives. Dyer portrays Anderson's boyfriend who was also attacked and terrible disfigured. Good movie to rent but I would not buy it.

Looking to create some space on my DVD shelf, I decided to watch Straightheads, which has been gathering dust for quite some time largely due to its bewildering title which gives zero indication of what the film is actually about. On seeing that Danny Dyer was in it, I almost put the damn thing straight back (hell, I almost threw it in the bin), but being rather partial to a bit of Gillian Anderson, and noticing that she gets her kit off in this film (must be why I bought it in the first place), I opted to go ahead and watch it. And it's pretty damn good, a brutal rape/revenge tale that isn't afraid to play things a little differently.Anderson is Alice, a successful London businesswoman who sinks her cougar claws into cheeky Cockney alarm installer Adam (Dyer, who is actually bearable for a change), inviting him to a swanky party and then shagging him in the woods. The evening ends badly, however, when a road-rage incident on the way home results in the couple being brutally attacked by three men; Adam receives a right-royal kicking that leaves him blind in one eye, and Alice is left walking funny after a brutal gang rape.A month later, while driving down a country lane, Alice recognises one of her attackers and follows him home. Soon after, Adam accompanies Alice to the man's house where they spot all three of their assailants. The scene is now set for some good old-fashioned retribution, but matters become complicated due to Adam's initial reluctance to resort to violence and unforeseen developments that leave Alice ambivalent about her plans for revenge.These conflicting emotions go to make Straightheads far less 'cut and dried' and consequently more intriguing than many rape/revenge movies, which usually offer only one inevitable outcome; however, those viewers for whom a satisfying revenge is paramount needn't think that they're going to be cheated: all three men do get their just desserts, it's just not always obvious which character is going to serve it up. The violence, when it eventually happens, is not as graphic as many (including myself) would probably like, but what occurs is still cringe-worthy, especially when the barrel of a rifle is used to give one unlucky rapist a taste of his own medicine and the term 'an eye for an eye' is taken literally with the help of a big knife.With justice having been done, the film ends abruptly, leaving the viewer to ponder what they would have done in the same situation.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb, meaning that the film is now deserving of a permanent place on my shelf (although if that terrible deleted cake scene in the DVD extras had made it into the final cut, I might not have been quite as generous).

Dan Reed, an award winning documentary director, débuts with a thriller that will only be watched for its self proclaimed shock value and soon forgotten for the lack of this and, quite frankly, any value whatsoever.Alice's (Gillian Anderson) and Adam's (Danny Dyer) meeting is one of a chance. After he installs an alarm system in her upper class apartment, she invites him to a dull house warming party in a countryside in the unlike role of a sex toy. Their accident is one of a chance too. Alice hits a deer and they are both forced to pull over to remove the suffering animal from the road. There, they are attacked by three men they passed by earlier on. Adam is brutally beat up and Alice's raped. After one month recovery, she manages to return to work and Adam, with one eye blind and his face scarred stays locked at her home, struggling to overcome his accident inflicted impotence. When Alice learns of her father's death she drives to the countryside again where she encounters one of the rapists. She persuades Adam to take revenge they supposedly deserve.Reed, with a brief 76 minutes running time, skips any unnecessary expositions but unfortunately in the process, looses most of the motivation for both the characters and the audience. What's left is paper thin. Dyer is his own, low class, laddish caricature and Anderson's middle aged, sexy businesswoman is played on a hysterical autopilot. Even their unlikely affair is played out with no true interest in an inevitable contrast they create. It seems that they both serve a foolish, deus ex machina plot where Reed's main moral concern is whether the revenge is not even more dehumanizing than animalistic behaviour that provokes it. He's bend on making a statement but with no interest in the process, he jumps right to the end far to quickly and makes the whole experience unconvincing and uninteresting.Straightheads, for the most part, plays out like a character film but the little emotional intimacy that the characters actually share, is blown away by the outbursts of violence and sex. They do little more but emphasize the growing brutalization of Adam and Alice-something so painfully obvious and insubstantial that it's difficult to find any justification for the grim tones that film hits. In its attempt on deep, structured emotional insight into the life post trauma, it seems to be too brief and relies too strongly on in-your-face violence to awake any serious afterthought.And even despite its length, Straightheads is a drag. With 20 minutes of deleted footage available on the DVD, it looks like it wasn't really sure of its narration's rhythm. It ultimately emphasizes little of the tension and drama that first rate thriller should provide and instead it dwells on cheap, worn out psychology. The metamorphosis of Adam and Alice is foreseeable and because of that disengaging. As the film, unbearably slowly, drifts towards its conclusion, Dyer's restrained pansy regresses into a violent psycho and the film reaches its feeble ending with no constructive point. It all ends too abruptly with ambiguity that is usually reserved for films of explicit intellectual strength. But Adam's stare on the audience remains empty- a worthless gesture, a last failed stunt committed by a film of a stunning, obscure numbness.Verdict: Straightheads seems like a challenging attempt but comes across as to scared of any serious commitment to its brutal, provocative subject. Instead it will try to shock you with relentless, gruesome images but it's all just a sombre bore. It recalls visceral, nauseating power of Straw Dogs and Irreversible but is nowhere near as engaging, original or graphic.1.5/5

A young couple are beaten and raped on the way home from a party in the English countryside. The nature of their relationship has all the hallmarks of a transitory sexual dalliance. Alice, a well-educated professional woman, played by the tremendous Gillian Anderson, and Adam played by Danny Dyer, a younger man installing an elaborate security system in her apartment. An unlikely couple thrown together by lust and opportunity whose connection takes on a much more complex and ambiguous character after the horrific events following the party and then the fortuitous chance to take revenge on the perpetrators.What appears to be a tale of revenge is really a healing process where uncertainty and doubt surround the quest of the two victims and eventually a denouement where separate solutions are sought and an outcome where fulfillment remains elusive.I really liked the way director Dan Reed handled the interplay between Alice and Adam after their terrible experience and explored the shifting ground of their relationship, complicated by contact with one of the perpetrators whose actions appear not to be motivated by criminal intent but something rather more understandable. Flawed but fascinating. 8/10