Straightheads

Plot synopsis:
Adam, a 23-year-old self-employed security technician, is hired by a businesswoman, Alice Comfort, to set up a security system in her flat. After finishing the work, Adam falls asleep on a lawnchair on her roof-garden. When Alice arrives home and finds him there, she impulsively asks him to accompany her to a housewarming party for her boss. He is unsure, but eventually agrees.
After a drive, Alice and Adam arrive at the party. Alice leaves Adam to speak to some people at the party. Adam leaves the house, feeling out of place. Alice later finds Adam outside in the grounds, then leads him into some woods and they have sex.
On the way home from the party, Alice and Adam are caught behind a slow-moving vehicle, which Alice frustratedly overtakes whilst Adam shouts out an obscenity at the driver. Shortly thereafter, Alice is distracted from driving and accidentally hits a stag. She brings the car to a stop, and they drag the stag off the road. While they are moving it, the car that Alice had earlier overtaken pulls up behind Alice's car. Three men get out, badly beat Adam and then rape Alice.
A month passes, during which Adam and Alice physically heal - the only reminder of the attack being an eyepatch that Adam must wear to protect an eye wound he received during the beating - but both remain emotionally wounded. Upon returning to work, Alice receives notification that, while she was hospitalized following her rape, her father died. Alice drives out to his country estate to put his affairs in order, where she discovers a locked chest that she recognizes from her childhood. On the way home, she passes by a group of riders on horseback, one of whom she recognizes as having raped her. She gets his name - Heffer - from one of the other riders.
Alice then contacts Adam, and he makes his way to Alice's father's house where she tells him that she's found one of the men responsible for attacking them. Alice shows Adam the contents of her father's locked chest: a sniper rifle and silencer that her father apparently smuggled home after being discharged from the army. Alice then tells Adam that she intends to avenge herself against Heffer.
Adam and Alice move into Alice's father's home, and spend their days practising shooting with the rifle. After they have become proficient with it, they take a trip out to the edge of Heffer's land and begin plotting the best way to kill him. During their reconnaissance, they learn that Heffer has a dog on his property, which barks whenever they approach the house. Alice shoots the dog, then makes Adam collect its body so that they can dispose of it. A moment later, Heffer comes outside looking for the dog; Alice is preparing to shoot him when a young woman (later identified as Heffer's daughter, Sophie) comes out of the house to help find the dog. Alice and Adam, disturbed by seeing their attacker as a human being, return home.
Over the next several days Alice and Adam try to determine if they should follow through with their plan. Adam, who has been impotent since the attack, steadily becomes more aggressive and committed to the idea of murdering Heffer. Alice, however, has grown reluctant to kill Heffer now that she has seen him in a human context; instead, she sends Adam to clandestinely set up security equipment in Heffer's house in an attempt to determine the identities and locations of his friends who participated in the gang-rape.
Adam succeeds in breaking into Heffer's house, where he learns that Heffer is the submissive party in his relationship with the other attackers. In need of money, they have decided to blackmail Heffer with their knowledge of the rape, forcing him to give them money in exchange for not anonymously tipping off the police as to his identity.
Adam, seeking a means of escape, ends up in Sophie's room; initially, he merely attempts to keep her quiet so that he can get out of the house, but he has a sudden fit of rage and begins raping her. In the middle of the attack, she escapes from his grasp, and Adam returns home, able to maintain an erection for the first time since the attack. He and Alice begin to have sex, but when he starts to become too rough with her she throws him off. Adam leaves the house and heads out into the woods.
The next day, Alice uses a laptop computer that controls the security cameras and watches Heffer in his house. She quickly realises his intention is to kill himself and after grabbing the rifle she drives over, and stops her car just in front of a garage upon hearing a car horn sounding. Alice gets inside the garage and finds Heffer, sitting in his running car, attempting to kill himself with carbon monoxide poisoning. Alice gets Heffer out of the car and into fresh air, saving his life; once he regains consciousness, she helps him back into his house. In the midst of a delirium from the carbon monoxide, Heffer—who doesn't recognize Alice—confesses that, a month ago, his friends voiced their intentions to rape his daughter, but that he convinced them to rape and beat a woman and her friend in the middle of the road instead.
Just then, Alice and Heffer hear Adam calling from outside, and Heffer suddenly turns violent, grabbing her roughly but Alice hits him and frees herself. Adam then bursts into the house, beats Heffer, duct-tapes him to the kitchen table, and holds him down while Alice sodomizes him with the barrel of the rifle that she has fetched from her car; once she is finished, she prepares to kill him, but now feeling pity for him because of the circumstances surrounding the rape, she decides not to pull the trigger. Adam, infuriated, takes out a hunting knife and carves out Heffer's eye. Horrified, Alice runs away; driving back to her father's home, Alice spots Sophie hitch-hiking, and invites her into her car. When Sophie realizes she isn't being taken home, she asks Alice where they're headed; Alice replies, "Somewhere safe."
Back at Heffer's house, Adam taunts Heffer until he hears a car pulling up; as one of the attackers approaches the house, Adam fatally shoots him in the head before pursuing the remaining attacker through the grounds of Heffer's house. Adam shoots him in the leg as he flees, causing him to fall to the ground. Adam then approaches the wounded man and bludgeons him to death with the butt of the rifle. In the final shot of the film, Adam walks away from his final victim and approaches the screen for a close up shot. He effectively breaks the fourth wall by glancing at the audience - leaving the viewer to reflect on the violent act of revenge Adam has committed.

Tags: revenge, murder, violence

Review:
Gillian Anderson was probably the best thing about the film but I don't really buy Danny Dyer playing opposite her and there were certain scenes that were unintentionally humorous because of this.
Great to see Gillian Anderson on screen again, and to be honest i would not have predicted this role for her however she was well cast.Personally i quite enjoyed the slightly comedic satire that ran through some of the scenes, and i think Danny Dyer helped with this.
It is hard to tell if the film would have maybe been stronger with a different leading male, but then Dyer plays the 'male struggling with his emasculation.Definitely lacking depth, i left wishing i had known exactly what happens with Anderson's character and her father, along with simply wishing i knew Dyer's character better.Some uncomfortable scenes which i felt were not always necessary, although they do help to give the film an edginess that i liked.
It's a little short, clocking in just over 70 minutes, so by the end I thought to myself, "is that all there is?" Yet the film did have something of an impact on me, because I found myself thinking about it all the next day and recommending it to friends.
When Alice (Gillian Anderson), a middle-class businesswoman, meets Adam (Danny Dyer) a working-class surveillance expert, she invites him to a party.
After encountering a group of locals on a country road, a shocking incident takes place that sees Adam lose an eye whilst Alice is brutally raped.
Several weeks later, Alice crosses paths with one of their attackers...I had heard a lot about this movie, although most of what I'd heard revolved around a scene near the end of the film involving Anderson's use of a gun barrel.
Their planning of revenge simply consists of creeping around spying on their attackers, and the scenes in which they try to deal with their anguish don't work either as both characters aren't given enough depth for us to care about them.The final scenes seem to come out of nowhere and are carried out in such a way that they're not satisfying to the audience.
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.
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)..
After the installation of an alarm system by the twenty-three year old low-class Adam (Danny Dyer) in her fancy upper class apartment, the sophisticated owner Alice (Gillian Anderson) invites him to go with her in her boss' "opening house" boring party in the countryside.
Alice meets Adam and convinces him to come with her to take revenge against the violent man."Closure" is a weird movie, with a promising premise wasted in an awful and pointless screenplay.
The story begins with an absolutely poor development of the lead characters: who is upper-middle class Alice; what is her profession; and how is her relationship the "alarm guy" Adam?
In the story, Alice is a tough character seeking revenge while Adam is weak; however, the situation reverts in the end, and Adam's attitude is totally plausible and believable; but Alice seems to feel sorry and sympathy for the violent rapist and the whole plot becomes senseless and pointless.
Although I use this site quite frequently to see how other people rated what I think are challenging or just plain enjoyable films, after watching this "movie" on Film Four last night I felt compelled to write something down, even if it just helps cleanse me once again.The film was possibly the shallowest experience I've ever had - the main characters played by Danny Dyer (23?
You sure?) and Gillian Anderson (who will always be Scully as Leonard Nimoy will always be Spock) had no real substance about them - I'm not sure if the first half-hour of the film didn't make the final cut but surely in a revenge movie you would like some empathy with the victims...
I thought this movie started out kind of slow because it was just random sex and nudity and then a brutal attack and nothing happened for like 30 minutes.
I wouldn't recommend it, but if u want to see a thriller and your bored, then go ahead and give it a chance because Gillian Anderson pulls off a pretty good performance as a victim out for revenge..
I consider both Gillian Anderson and Danny Dyer to be good at what they do and was interested to see what Dan Reed could come up with but unfortunately it just didn't work for me.The problem lies in the fact that the film doesn't really seem to understand which genre it's falling into and as such it fails to impress on drama, horror and thriller elements because rather than focusing on one of them and doing it well it's a bit of a jack of all trades and master of none.The premise (as with most revenge films) is simple, couple meet and go out, something bad happens and they get their revenge it's a simple formula and one that many directors have handled expertly over the years.
Unfotunately in this case it's as if Dan Reed thought, "It'd be great to do one of those revenge films that goes a little deeper by showing a more human side to all the characters and delving into their mental state in more detail...." Wrong!
But what is Gillian Anderson doing getting involved with a film like this after the brilliance of her performance as Lady Deadlock in the BBC TV adaptation of Bleak House last year?
The two of them suffer the mental strain of what happened and soon Alice thinks it would be best to get revenge on the attackers.CLOSURE was originally titled STRAIGHTHEADS when it was released in Britain but when it came to America it was given a new title and went straight-to-DVD, which is understandable because there's really nothing here that demands for it to have been shown in a theater.
Part of me wanted to enjoy this movie more than I actually did but there's just no way to get around the fact that there were all sorts of problems here.As you can tell, this is yet another rape/revenge tale and there have been countless ones made over the past few decades.
The film doesn't know what it wants to do so the viewer is pretty much just sitting there waiting for something to unfold and there were just too many logical issues that I had with the picture.For starters, not for a second did I buy the relationship between Alice and Adam.
I've read reviews where people called Adam a baby and a whiner but I don't mind seeing a "weak" guy on screen but the problem is the screenplay just doesn't do the character or the situation any favors.There's a twist that happens and some graphic violence that finally comes up.
Similarly, there's a part where a daughter runs out the house shouting for her dog which is swiftly avoided with yet another embarrassing sex scene between Danny and Gillian, but don't worry the camera's so clumsy that you can't see a thing!When the revenge finally does occur (after about an hour of no-suspense building up to it) it's so quick that it feels even more pointless.
You were never really sure of the exact relationship between Alice (Gillian Anderson), the cougar businesswoman, and Adam (Danny Dyer), the 23-year-old security installer.
The official synopsis is after surviving a gang rape and mugging, a middle aged businesswoman and her 23 year old boyfriend plot to murder their attackers, but find themselves conflicted about carrying out their plans.We kick this off with Adam (Danny Dyer).
Like most rape revenge films, she decides that she is going to take care of the men that hurt her.
I feel like there needed to have been more time to get to know the characters of Alice & Adam & to explore their relationship more.
High flying cougar Gillian Anderson and her unlikely toy boy lover Danny "geezer" Dyer find themselves in a spot of bother whilst driving home from a house party in the middle of the English countryside.
Straightheads wants to be a modern version of Straw Dogs but just ends up being low wattage, low grade muddled revenge tale.Alice (Gillian Anderson) is a high powered businesswoman who enters into a relationship with young Adam (Danny Dyer) who only came round to install a security system in her flat.Alice probably wants a bit of rough and asks Adam to attend a party in the countryside.
On their way home, Adam is attacked by three men, Alice is raped.A month later, still traumatised after the attack, Alice wants revenge and track the men down.Even with its short running time, this is a slow tedious film and badly shot.
What happens to Alice (Gillian Anderson) and Adam (Danny Dyer) is appalling and devastating, yet Dan Reed somehow manages to rub the viewer's nose in every last glob of its sexual nastiness.
His script forces his characters to behave in such a way as to alienate the viewer further from the 'victims' by shoving more ghastly situations into their faces (Adams's attempted post-incident assaults on both Sophie and Alice; Alice's assault on Heffer AFTER his suicide-attempt confession).The quandary comes from the central protagonists' performances - Dyer is a horrible actor, incapable of light and shade as the young male victim of the initial assault (he'll end up in Eastenders, mark my words), but Anderson is extraordinary.
Personally I think that director run out of money before finishing this because movie ends before they execute anyone else involved in this gang-rape and beating which is not big surprise because sponsor obviously has seen this and wanted to take back his money.
But then I took some time to read some of the reviews here and most of them pretty much summed up everything I felt about the movie.I'm a X-files fan, so I watched this only because featured Gillian Anderson, despite knowing that this was a bad movie.But come on!
The chemistry and sexual tension between Alice -Gillian Anderson- and Adam -Danny Dyer- is sizzling hot and quite erotic.
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.
You are compelled to feel revulsion at her plight, and can understand her cry for revenge.The effects on the couple's relationships, and how they individually perceive revenge is a strong part of the storyline, as is how they both deal with the realisation that 'Revenge is sweet'.Danny Dyer portrays his character fairly effectively and the mood change towards the end is quite effective, but Gillian Anderson outshines him.Anthony Calf, who plays the instigator of the brutal rape, puts in a good performance and when he explains to his victim why he felt forced to do what he did, you could almost, but not quite, feel sorry for him.The Director, Dan Reed, is no stranger to awards for his work.
Making it in 2007, though, is just being behind the curve.The story is about successful British businesswoman Alice (Gillian Anderson) who invites security system installer Adam (Danny Dyer) to a party at her boss' country estate.
When she returns to her parent's home after her father dies, Alice sees one of the men who attacked them and she and Adam set out to get even and more.When I say it would have caused a minor stir 20 years ago, that's because this revenge film casts the woman as the cold hearted seeker of vengeance and the man as her conflicted, reluctant sidekick.
But we've seen this story so many times before, with the violence and emotional conflict far more heightened, that you can't help but notice the movie isn't quite as good as it could or should be.This certainly isn't a bad film but except for Gillian Anderson's impressive boobage, there's really no reason to watch this movie instead of something else..
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.
This comes across at first like just another rape revenge film but when Anderson confronts her rapist we learn there is more to it than first appears.
To be completely honest i didn't know what i was watching when i flicked this film on at 11 in the evening.I see Danny dyer, an actor who's work i do like and i see Gillian Anderson who has never looked better.
There is a spark between this cheeky London lad and older and more mature business woman, i like the way things are progressing, though cringing as a vehicle is mocked by our new couple as i half know something will come of that action.The scene to follow shocks and disturbs me, yet i'm unable to look away, i feel intense anger and helplessness for our victims.The revenge that follows is bloody and vicious yet almost justified but borderline sadistic.For me it's the little things that effect me the most and the scene that says with me is, the morning after the trauma of the night before, sitting on a tree stump looking deeply damaged, a small trickle of blood gently glide down our lead female actresses inner thigh.This film is very far from Hollywood, no glitz no real glamour, just an intense emotional story about revenge..
On the way home, they upset three locals in a Landover who take their revenge by giving Dyer a good shoeing and gang raping Anderson.
I really like Gillian Anderson and Danny Dyer, but they were on a hiding to nothing with this film.
While lacking the punch of either, at least it's trying to do something different.The X Files' Gillian Anderson plays wealthy singleton Alice who hires security expert Adam (Danny Dyer) to install CCTV cameras at her home.
There is absolutely no point to this movie, except to see some really sick and twisted sex/rape scenes, Gillian Anderson relieving herself on the side of the road, and every single sentence of dialog having to use the "F" word at least a couple of times in it.
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.
(The second rape scene definitely was.We get it.She was raped and Adam is impotent!)The main reason I watched this movie was for Gillian Anderson (I'm a huge fan) and she was the best thing about it.