I want to be clear: this is a 5 star movie for me. Not five stars the way the original is 5 stars, but five stars for this movie.
I know a lot of people are going to have a lot of opinions, because I am strangely possessive over the first one and I think a lot of people feel like that. It’s a campy, bloody, masterpiece and it has reigned for 34 years. It was made the year I was born, so in that way, it feels like we are one. I am Road House, Road House is me. I’ve never ripped anyone’s throat out, but that doesn’t really matter.
When I saw they were ‘remaking’ it, (kind of just reimagining now that I’ve seen) I was very excited but also skeptical. There’s two ways to go when remaking something as loved as the original Road House and people are mad either way. You either try to get in every single thing that made the original beloved, every joke, every detail, but update it, or you keep the bones of that but make it new, it’s own thing. In my opinion this is the only way to do it. Because then you’re just making another good movie with nods to something, rather than trying to rebuild a ship that has already sailed.
I feel like the White Men Can’t Jump remake did that and another one I’m forgetting and it’s good. Maybe Hocus Pocus the new one as well.
If somehow you’ve never seen the original Road House, I think that’s a problem you should fix, but it stars a in his prime Patrick Swayze as Dalton, a bouncer/fighter who gets hired to “clean up” the Double Deuce, a bar in a small town run by a rich evil man, Brad Wesley. He owns everyone in the town and does whatever he wants until someone comes who can’t be bought. After a lot of explosions, car chases, and fist fights, Dalton (and the people of the town) kill Wesley and his goons, and are free to live normal lives. In the process Dalton loses his best friend, Sam Elliot, but gains a girlfriend, Kelly Lynch.
There are a lot of elements that make this a stand out classic. The blind musician who plays the blues every night while bottles and people go flying, the over the top intimidation of a rich man who does whatever he wants: driving on both sides of the road, plowing a monster truck through a car dealership, a stop sign through the windshield of a parked car. There are so many unique, wonderful things but mostly we know and understand the characters and watch a bloody, satisfying arc where everything is all right in the end, and a polar bear falls on someone in suspenders.
This movie didn’t do that, instead it adopted the feeling the original movie gives and translates it for a new audience. Instead of Missouri, we are in the Florida Keys. Instead of living in a barn loft, he lives on a house boat. But see how these are parallel elements? Instead of horses running, it’s open water, trees and an alligator but we still have an unconventional home that no one else wanted, with a lot of nature and peace.
These echoes are throughout and they are great. Still a doctor girlfriend with a strange haircut, still no phone, still a beat up car. He’s all there. This Dalton is a retired UFC fighter who killed or paralyzed (I don’t think we ever find out) his friend in a fight which caused him to leave the sport.
The first scene is a fight tournament that Post Malone (or Austin Post as it seems he wants to be known in the credits) is winning. He’s 6-0, and the announcer calls for any more takers. Dalton walks into the ring and starts unlacing his boots. Connor (Post) immediately says he won’t fight, leaves, and Dalton gets the cash. All this is observed by Jessica Williams, “Frankie” (Frank Tilighman in the original) the owner of a bar looking for some help. She came to hire the other guy, but after seeing him run from Dalton, decides he would be better.
Dalton turns her down and she insists he take her number, and after almost dying from suicide by train, he decides to give her a call. Once down in the Keys, he meets Charlie (Hannah Love Lanier), a smart girl who helps run her dead mom’s book store with her living dad. She gives him a brochure about trees in the area, and drops some self-aware literary references about stories like this. Westerns where a tough out of towner comes in to help get rid of a ‘bad element.’ They have an immediate connection and friendship.
Dalton heads over to the Road House, just what it’s called, where we meet Lukas Gage, and B.K. Cannon, the bouncer and bartender respectively. He jumps right in (not waiting the requisite first night like the original) and orders black coffee but finds out they only have Cuban. Things seem to be picking up, he puts five people in the hospital literally and figuratively-beats them up then drives them there.
This is a motorcycle gang affiliated with Ben Brandt, the rich son of a real estate magnate played expertly by Billy Magnussen. I have to pause from the recap for a moment to say that all the casting was great but some people just shine. Billy as the rich evil son was one of them. He plays it so unique-I really enjoyed his performance. We are introduced to him while he’s getting a razor shave on a boat going through choppy waters. He keeps saying everything is fine, and to continue, but each time he gets a nick, gets a little more agitated. Finally he stands up, goes to the captain of the boat and punches him in the face.
Ben’s interactions with Dalton are the most interesting, he doesn’t have the characteristic blind anger of a villain, there’s a lot more going on. In one confrontation scene he pulls up the YouTube of the fight where Dalton hurt his friend, his last fight before he left UFC, and says, “I think this is the one that did it-anyone can see he’s done, but you keep going, punch after punch, I just want to know why.” And his tone is playful, a little curious but also shaming. It’s unclear exactly what he wants from the exchange, and why he’s talking to him this way. It’s such an interesting scene. Then he gets up and walks away and tells Conor McGregor to kill him, and to make it ‘hurt as much as possible.’
Yes, Conor McGregor is in this, and it’s such an interesting choice that I really respect. In terms of the acting it’s not quite all there, but it doesn’t totally matter because he’s playing a braggadocios fighter, which, he is. I loved the scene that intros him. He’s climbing out a window naked, leaving a tryst with a married woman while her husband stands there yelling. He’s walking naked through a busy street when we hear a phone ring. He bends over and takes it out of his sock/shoe, it’s Ben’s dad calling from prison asking him to take care of things. He agrees and says, “Hold on a minute,” then head butts a man for his coat. We see him walking away from a burning fire that it’s implied he caused, now wearing a beautiful coat saying, “I’m on my way.” It’s a great scene.
He doesn’t have all the emotional notes you would want in the main villain he’s just all gas all the time and it never quite lands (for me) but what they lost in that minor detail they more than gained in physicality. The same way the main opponent in Road House 1989 (Marshall Teague) was a real fighter, (an ex-marine double black belt), Conor McGregor obviously is too. But what this brings to the movie is more than I would have thought.
Anyone can learn fight choreography, (I guess not anyone but many people) but there’s a physical difference between someone who studies something for 8 months and someone who does something professionally for 16 years. Conor’s been an active fighter since 2008 and it’s in the way he walks, in the way he moves. Jake Gyllenhaal has a six (maybe 8?) pack and arms but McGregor’s whole body seems shaped by fighting. His shoulders are built out so his arms are always a little raised, his legs seem a little bowlegged for grappling, he just looks like a weapon. I thought this added a lot and he did a great job. The thing that’s terrifying about boxers is how fast they are, light on their feet despite all the muscle. A lot of people can be huge, but to be huge and fast is deadly, and McGregor is. All his movements are so quick, jumping over a bar, ramming three guys into a wall-he has the mass and the speed that I think is really hard to build and his body fills in the gaps his acting creates (for me).
The camera work for the action and fight scenes was really interesting. They seemed to have gone to the prepositional phrases school of film, anything a squirrel can to do a tree or a plane to a cloud, that’s how we were viewing the fights. Which makes it seem more like you are in the fight than watching the fight.
At one point Dalton gets hit by a car and the camera is not showing this to us in a landscape shot but a perspective one, we’re bouncing in the bed of the truck, then hanging over a bridge, then underwater coming up. It’s very disorienting and I think successfully conveys how chaotic and immediate a fight feels. There were some choices I wouldn’t have made, that didn’t feel as successful, but overall very good.
I liked the humor in the movie! And the writing. I think a big hallmark of 80’s action films is a clever one liner delivered right before a punch, or right after an explosion, it’s such a specific energy and I think this movie did an amazing job of getting those in. And making them actually funny or clever, not cheesy, something the 80’s often missed. Casting comedic actors in serious roles happened a lot more in the past, especially the 90’s and early 2000’s and I think so many movies benefited from that. Jessica Williams, Lukas Gage, and Arturo Castro are standouts for people who have great comedic timing and line delivery who can do a lot with a little. That type of nuance can carry a movie from good to great and that definitely is happening here.
The rest of the plot is what you would think but I was interested in how they incorporated the police in this version. In the original, the cops aren’t really mentioned, they’re in Wesley’s pocket and don’t make an appearance until the end after Wesley’s been murdered, with everyone declining to speak to them (which is correct!).
In this version they had a much more active role, and are responsible for one of the first scenes where Dalton seems scared or not in control. The sheriff (“Big Dick” played by Joaquim de Almieda) who is also Ellie (love interest doctor played by Daniela Melchior)’s dad, first comes to speak with Dalton and threatens to arrest him and put him in jail and says that he will lose the paperwork and be stabbed the day he’s supposed to be released (“would make a good song”), while officers chase him out of the car with guns pointed at him, kicking him on the ground. Later he lies and says his daughter’s been kidnapped to get Dalton to bring money he took back to Ben, but then realizes she has actually been kidnapped and in double-crossing Dalton, Ben was double-crossing him. Don’t worry, everyone gets blown up on the boat, but I liked how the corrupt police added another power dynamic.
The climax of the movie is a boat chase turned explosion turned brawl, where people are literally flying through the air. Conor (character name Knox, who has multiple chest tattoos of his own name) displays how bloodthirsty he is by killing Ben for yelling right before focusing in on Dalton. I liked and disliked this main fight for a few reasons. I liked how chaotic it felt for the reasons I mentioned earlier, but I disliked that it didn’t feel like the stakes were real. At this point in the movie, Conor and Dalton have been hit by cars, boats, been blown up, thrown down, you name it, and they’re still trading blows. It felt a little endless the amount of abuse they could take and it took me out of the fight a little, made it feel like a movie in a way I wasn’t wanting.
Something I love about the original is that Patrick Swayze can get hurt. He isn’t invincible. He just never loses. Whoever he goes in with, whatever happens, he will be the one to walk away. This is an amazing level for a fighter to have in a movie because it’s believable. He gets stabbed and beat up and almost dies, but not before killing the other guy. Believable.
In this movie, not the case. Which doesn’t make it bad, just a little less fun for me. All movies have a level of suspension of disbelief, but movie fighting is funnest when it feels real, feels like someone could actually do it. I did like how he finally killed Conor, with multiple stakes to the chest and body, like a vampire, it was satisfying and unique and climactic. But yeah, they’d both already scaled a bridge and survived at least three things that would individually have killed them. But it’s a movie, I’m aware!
I liked how much grappling there was in the fights, especially Dalton’s final one with Conor. I think movies like to show fights as these big moments, punches that connect, big sweeps, etc. but most fights are won and lost on the ground, who has the upper hand, can maneuver out of or into a better position. There’s so much skill there that’s harder to recognize visually, especially if you’re not used to looking for it but that added a lot to the authenticity and was why I was still invested even when the other stuff didn’t feel real. Balance.
I also loved how they translated the element of medical knowledge from the first into this one. In the original he travels with his medical records, gives himself stitches, this imparts on the viewer how often this happens, how equipped he is in this way, it informs his character a lot. In this version they gave him all that knowledge but displayed it differently. When he was hurting people, he would explain what was happening in their body or what he was going to do. There’s a scene where someone’s trying to threaten him with a gun and he explains, if I just break your middle and index finger you won’t be able to fire the gun so it’s not that much of a threat is it? Then does. Also when he goes ham at the end to avenge Charlie and her dad after they get sent to the hospital and their book store is burned, he punches a guy in the throat (a little nod to the original-“there’s still throat stuff don’t worry!”) and says, I just broke the ___ bone in your throat and collapsed your larynx. You won’t be able to breathe anymore now.” And then that guy dies in the pool. Sick!! I really liked those moments.
We also got a scene where he points out a hidden weapon on a patron and helps show a bouncer how to diffuse it. In the original it’s a blade on the boot, in this one it’s a knife under the shirt. Like I said, little things like that they were kept really do make it feel like a good tribute at least.
I think the word remake is wrong here, just because for me that implies a much closer interpretation, like you’re making that movie again, but I think it’s instead you’re using that movie as a guideline or blueprint to make a different movie that’s fun in similar ways. It’s like when someone owns the rights to a character and they reinvent or imagine it. Like how Miles Morales is Spiderman too. This was the Miles Morales of Road House.
I also liked that I learned that crocodiles (alligators?) hide their food. That was a fun fact that became narratively relevant and I love when movies do that.
I also liked that they staked his emotional landscape-there was a moment when he was going to leave, and people kept asking if he was scared and finally he clarified he was scared what he would do when pushed too far. And Conor has a line where he’s like, “There’s something wrong with you. Me too.” That was such a fun moment. Happy for Jake, it feels like he got this because he did Southpaw and I loved Southpaw.
Really great, everyone involved should feel proud. 5/5 crocs would masturbate again.
I Heard The Book Was Better 