Let me preface this review by saying I’ve never actually seen the original Patrick Swayze film Road House , but I’m aware of both it and its devout cult following. But by not being a fan of the original, I was able to come into the 2024 remake, from director Doug Liman and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, with zero expectations. The original film has a reputation of being “so bad it’s good”, so how does the remake compare to that statement and is it worth two hours of your life? Road House stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Elwood Dalton, a former UFC fighter living today as a drifter who makes his money doing underground bare-knuckle boxing. Or at least, he makes his money off of the fear of his reputation, with the opposition usually forfeiting any fight with Dalton before it starts. These are the smarter ones in this movie. Dalton walks about like a walking myth, with every other person seemingly knowing of him. After one such “fight”, he makes the acquaintance of Frankie (Jessica Williams), who owns an unruly roadhouse named, wait for it, The Road House, and needs some serious muscle to act as a bouncer to reign in the clientele. After initially refusing the offer, Dalton gets on a bus and heads to the Florida Keys to take Frankie up on her offer and to help train a younger generation of bouncers, only there’s a bit more going on at the seaside watering hole than rowdy drunks. Road House feels like two movies. The first half was fairly surprising, in that it was taking itself seriously, was more grounded than I thought it would be and wasn’t heavy on action. A teen named Charlie, who helps her dad run a local bookstore, points out to Dalton and to the audience that this version of Road House is much more like a Western, with Dalton acting as an outlaw drifter coming into town to deal with the problems at the local saloon. And while the movie is very self-aware in this comparison, it’s also not wrong and works in its favour. Road House’s first half feels a lot like a neo-western, and nowhere is this more apparent than Dalton himself. He doesn’t have much in the way of a character arc, but he also doesn’t need one. He’s there to help a local problem and then ride off into the sunset, he’s not made any better by his experience but his involvement does end up having a positive impact, which is a profoundly Western trope. I also enjoyed the humour in the first half, with Dalton being very reserved, even respectful towards those he was about to send to Pound Town, inquiring about the distance to the hospital, their insurance coverage and even opting to drive everyone that he’s beaten half to death to the hospital himself. I thought this was actually pretty neat, Dalton wasn’t some heartless goon (that is, until he gets really angry, which he does when things start to get out of control later on in the film). Gyllenhaal made sure to convey that Dalton is the toughest guy in the room but he’s also a pretty nice guy; albeit one with a dark past that the film does explore. Also, credit where credit is due, but Gyllenhaal clearly put in the work for this role, looking like a legit UFC fighter in terms of his physique. Dalton befriends and becomes romantically involved with Ellie (Daniela Melchior), a nurse who initially shuns him for sending so many people to the hospital, thus clogging up the system. But the two eventually strike an understanding. They don’t really have the best chemistry, unfortunately, so the scenes don’t feel that impactful, but it’s never cringy. Then there’s Billy Magnusun as Ben Brandt, a sleazy criminal and real estate mogul who has been buying beachfront property and seeks The Road House to build a hotel on the shoreline. Arturo Castro rounds out the cast as Moe, a member of the biker gang who is kind of a lovable dork, in way over his head and provides the film with some of its best comedic bits. I wish Road House had more of Moe. Then there’s the other half of Road House , and I do mean this literally because right around the halfway point, real-life UFC fighter (and former featherweight and lightweight champion) Conor McGregor enters both the film and Hollywood, buck-ass nude with an energy level that feels like cocaine fuelled with a dozen Red Bulls. It almost feels like Doug Liman was filming McGregor without the fighter knowing, as the character feels wildly unpredictable and the exact polar opposite of Dalton. In other words, he was playing himself, one could say. McGregor definitely won’t be winning any acting awards anytime soon, but you can tell he’s having a blast on screen, strutting around like he owns the whole island while making dumb oneliners and adding “baby” to the end of his sentences. Love it or hate it, the tone of the film definitely goes from a more deliberate film to one that feels like a dumb B-movie the moment McGregor’s Knox becomes part of the story. Despite having the involvement of the UFC, the fights in Road House feel a little weird. While Liman has some solid cinematography at work for most of the film, the fighters are stitched together by some very noticeable CGI transitions that make the beatdowns feel fake. Likewise, CGI is used to land punches directly onto the actors’ faces and the effect also comes off as cheap and fake. For a movie that should feature some memorable hand-to-hand combat sequences, they end up being some of the least memorable parts of the movie. It’s not all bad, some of it is fun, but there’s more questionable moments than expected; especially during the climactic showdown. Leading up to the release of Road House, Doug Liman wrote a pretty scathing op-ed on Deadline, blasting Amazon for not releasing the film theatrically. He claimed that this was the film he was most proud of and that it was the highest-tested film of his career. Having seen the film, I think Liman was looking for some easy publicity because there’s no way this movie is better than The Bourne Identity or Edge of Tomorrow. But it’s also not a bad film. Would I rewatch it again? Unknown, but I ultimately enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It’s pretty dumb and most certainly won’t be on any best-of-the-year lists, but I also had fun with it, more so than I thought I would.
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