Dustin Hoffman · 1971 · Signature Roles
David Sumner is a mild-mannered American mathematician who moves with his wife to her village in rural England, hoping for quiet.
David Sumner is a mild-mannered American mathematician who moves with his wife to her village in rural England, hoping for quiet. Dustin Hoffman plays him as a man who has built his whole identity on reasonableness — and director Sam Peckinpah’s film is about what happens when reasonableness meets men who respect only force.
The film is notorious for its violence, and Hoffman does not soften it. David’s transformation from pacifist to a man defending his house with traps and a shotgun is played not as triumph but as horror: he becomes what he feared, and the film leaves you unsure whether that is survival or defeat. It is one of Hoffman’s most uncomfortable performances, and one of his bravest, because it refuses to let the audience cheer.
