How does David go from being a schlemiel who's too intimidated to challenge day laborers about killing his cat...to being a brave He Man who slaughters the same guys for trying to intrude on his home?
The character of Amy doesn't make any more sense...but I'll just leave that alone because it's discussed more.
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There's a scene in Band of Brothers where the company's resident coward is given advice by its hero
"The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."
It's been awhile since I've seen it... so I forget exactly how it played out... but there's a switch inside of a lot of people where if they pass a certain point where they no longer give a fuck... they can overcome fear and do something brave. Sometimes, not always... bravery is more a function of stupidity or obliviousness than true courage. It's easy to go into battle if you are hyper competent... or have never faced a true setback in your life... to be completely ignorant of being badly hurt or beaten. What takes true bravery is to be fully cognizant of the danger... yet go ahead and confront it anyway. Most civilized men are risk averse and have lost touch with their animal nature because it's completely unfamiliar territory... they might go to the gym and be stronger than some gangster kid but they fear them because brute strength is something they no longer use like a vestigial tail. I think Borges wrote a short story about this called El sur.
Anyway... it's hard to imagine Dustin Hoffman beating up people because he's so small... but actually was in shape in real life (remember Marathon Man) so it's not out of the realm of possibility that given proper motivation he could rise to the occasion and beat up some thugs assuming they weren't expert fighters themselves.
Thanks for your reply.
He uses weapons on the intruders, so I don't take issue with whether he could physically pull it off or not. It's that the movie doesn't show any transitional scene like what you're mentioning re: his basic personality.
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I agree it's not very realistic, but I can see why a non-confrontational person wouldn't want to accuse 5 assholes of killing his cat. It's just asking to escalate the situation. He's in a new country and has no friends or support system outside of his wife. I don't know what she expected him to do about it.
As for the end, they had him backed into a corner and it was fight or flight. It's not like he was afraid of them before and not at that moment, he just had no choice and found out what he was capable of.