ROAD HOUSE (1989) is one of my all time favorite movies. It is simultaneously extremely of its time and absolutely of all times. There’s nothing like it, nothing as good as it, it’s a lightning bolt and they stopped making the type of bottle you would need to even try to catch it again. But it is possible to make a fun remake of it, and I know this because after many years of threatening somebody finally went through with it. ROAD HOUSE (2024) skipped theaters because it was made for the Amazon Prime Free Product Shipping and Digital Television Network, but I liked it more than any non-JOHN WICK or M:I theatrically released Hollywood action movie of recent years I can think of. It’s funny and badass and different enough from the original to stand on its own.
The director is Doug Liman (THE BOURNE IDENTITY, LIVE DIE REPEAT F.K.A. EDGE OF TOMORROW), Joel Silver is still the producer, the credited screenwriters are Anthony Bagarozzi (THE NICE GUYS) & Charles Mondry (in development DOC SAVAGE and PLAY DIRTY), sharing a story credit with David Lee Henry (OUT FOR JUSTICE) for his work on the original, and at some point some combination of those people apparently cracked the key to pulling this off. See, one of the things that makes the original ROAD HOUSE fun is the concept: the legendary but humble bad motherfucker who drifts into town, makes friends, stays cool, kicks ass when pushed, and comes out on top. It’s also the wild bar brawls, the music, the slimy rich bad guys and their bastard henchmen, the knowing but un-self-conscious absurdity and excess. But mostly it’s Patrick Swayze, a unique and irreplaceable movie star who could play Dalton as an elite cooler, gentle sweetheart and wise philosopher and make it seem that he, Patrick Swayze, 1000% believes every word Dalton is saying, every choice he’s making. And one thing we don’t want to see, though some may claim otherwise, is some other dude trying to re-create what Swayze did. ‘Cause nobody could do it as well.
So what they did was they kept a bunch of the cool action hero parts of that character, and applied them to one of the great and unique movie stars of today – one that in fact worked with Swayze in DONNIE DARKO! – and let him do it his way. So we will still have to refer to the original for the “Be Nice” speech when we need it (which is pretty much every day, let’s be honest), but Jake Gyllenhaal (CITY SLICKERS) doesn’t do it here, because he’s not trying to be Swayze. If he did “be nice” it would be cute, but it would be hollow. Instead we get a different Dalton based in Gyllenhaal’s specific humor, and it’s really a great performance, one forged from his years being more interesting as a weirdo, but now shifting that guy slightly to pass for a leading man by being absolutely cut, wearing cool shirts, being the fucking Man, getting laughs while terrifying and confusing his enemies, partly by… well, by being nice to them. It seems like a put on to intimidate them, and when it turns out it’s not that seems to mess with them even more.
Gyllenhaal’s version is named Elwood Dalton, but everyone just calls him Dalton. He gets a top shelf introduction strolling in late to an underground fight where a sloppy but unbeatable tough guy named Carter Ford (Austin “Post Malone” Post, WRATH OF MAN) has been taking on all challengers without much effort. Dalton enters the ring, sits down on a stool, takes off his hoodie, and the crowd gasps. Before he’s even unlaced his combat boots Carter has recognized him as “that fucking guy” and refuses to fight him, so he gets to leave with the money, and without throwing a punch.
Then the promoter stabs him in the parking lot and runs away in fear, so he sits on the shitty car he lives in, attending to the wound with Super Glue and duct tape while refusing an offer from Frankie (Jessica Williams, BOOKSMART) to head security at her bar in the Florida Keys. So this is already a great action hero we got here, in my opinion.
Both of the writers have worked with Shane Black, and it shows. I think there’s even a little Martin Riggs in this Dalton – the funny fucked up guy with the heart of gold. Even has a pretty great variation on the hero-considers-suicide part of LETHAL WEAPON. Dalton’s past tragedy is his own doing, though. We will learn that he was a UFC fighter who killed a guy in the octagon. Kept punching when he was already out. He never wants to go that far again, so it has made him very conscious of consequences and lines that need to be drawn to stay in control. And of course he will eventually lose that control.
The titular roadhouse has a very different vibe from the original, more of a paradise than a redneck warehouse. I don’t understand the thinking behind losing the name The Double Deuce in favor of The Road House, except to explain why the title is two words instead of one, but it’s a cool triangular building with a thatched roof, right on the beach with a patio overlooking the water. When he first gets there he sits drinking a cup of Cuban coffee while the band warms up and I thought this actually seemed like a good place to spend time. Sure beats his car. His boss is funny, he likes mentoring the younger bouncers Billy (Lukas Gage, the shitty golfer husband on Fargo Season 5) and Reef (Dominique Columbus, Ray Donovan), and the bartender Laura (B.K. Cannon) is really nice to him, even brings him breakfast. That the filmmakers avoid redoing some of the most famous (or memed) parts but include smaller moments like that shows a genuine respect for the original, I think.
And they handled the music well. Instead of one house band it seems to rotate each night, much of it seems possibly recorded live for real, a pretty good variety of styles, blues and zydeco and what not, and all people that I wouldn’t necessarily seek out but if they were playing live at the bar I’d think they were good. Of course they still have a fence to protect them from thrown bottles, and in fact one of the red lines a villain crosses in order to start trouble is tearing through the cage and insulting the band.
Like the Double Deuce, The Road House is a place where crazy fights break out all the time. (A Florida thing, maybe.) But also local rich boy Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen, BIRTH OF THE DRAGON, INGRID GOES WEST, ALADDIN) is desperate to buy Frankie’s land to build a resort, and she refuses, so he sends biker gangs and shit to make staying in business miserable. There’s some subtext here because Brandt says he “built” this town, by which he means his family has generational wealth that allows them to own things including the police and they do crimes (which his dad is in prison for now). Frankie also inherited this from her family – her uncle who actually did build the Road House despite the challenges of being a Black business owner in the south at that time.
Though Brandt is a non-combatant villain I think he’s a really good one. He has the exact right hair cut and light colored hipster suit to come into The Road House and look like a fucking asshole. And I’m intrigued that he knows Laura by name. His introduction having a guy shave him with a straight razor on his yacht during a storm is funny and says so much: he’s a psycho, he’s an idiot, he thinks he’s entitled to do anything he wants, and blames his failures on the guys who are too afraid of him to say no. It’s a great running gag to see him get increasingly frustrated each time his goons have to tell him they failed. But also it’s a little scary that he finally has a face-to-face with Dalton only to poke him about his traumatic past. I don’t think it even serves a strategic purpose. He’s just a creep.
I’m aware that other people are saying this is not a good movie, but I don’t get it. The first big confrontation with bikers is a classic scene, Dalton ultimately having to slap and twist and break these guys in the parking lot, but only after trying to talk them out of it, asking them if they have health insurance, and being assured that there’s a hospital within driving distance. Then he borrows a car to personally drive them there, and apologizes to the doctor for the extra work. Dr. Ellie (Daniela Melchior (THE SUICIDE SQUAD, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, FAST X) doesn’t initially seem amused by him, but as in the original they start to see each other and she tells him some of the stuff about the town.
I love the ascetic asskickers. This Dalton has no car anymore, no phone, turns down being put up in a hotel because he prefers to live in a tiny houseboat, has befriended a teenage girl named Charlie (Hannah Lanier, Special Ops: Lioness) and her dad Stephen (Kevin Carroll, JESUS’ SON, PAID IN FULL) at a used bookstore who help him look things up on their computer. It’s important for a Dalton to have friends. And I don’t know if he really counts as that, but there’s a really funny character named Moe (Arturo Castro, BUSHWICK, Broad City), a biker whose arm he breaks but he likes Dalton so much he later says “Hey man, good to see you!” during a brawl.
Brandt’s imprisoned dad calls in an absolute psychopath named Knox (former UFC champion and frequent recipient of sexual assault allegations Conor McGregor in his acting debut) to burn the place down. I wish they could’ve gotten that energy without hiring a real life villain, but to the extent that I was able to set that aside he is a funny one, a bizarre-looking agent of chaos cartoonishly strutting around with a shit-eating-grin on his face, so happy that he can be the absolute worst and no one can stand up to him because of the physical threat he poses. Kind of like the real, but also the reverse of Dalton – he purposely starts shit, and enjoys hurting people. I like that they don’t pretend he’s a mastermind at all. He’s more like a roid raging gremlin.
The action follows the original in that they have some big, out of control bar brawls, and also break down Dalton to go savage in a protracted one-on-one with the rich guy’s top henchman. They also throw in some boat chase shit – why not? They got water, might as well use it. I think the fights are well choreographed and I really like how they’re shot (cinematographer: Henry Braham, THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, THE SUICIDE SQUAD), maybe a few slightly disorienting whip pans, but mostly it’s very good about moving with the fighters as they get tossed around, switching to an occasional interesting POV shot, keeping the energy up.
I had seen some complaints about “CGI in the fight scenes,” and I kept wondering what it was gonna be – some kind of THE-FAST-AND-THE-FURIOUS-engine-interior meets THE-STREET-FIGHTER-bone-break-x-ray or something? It turns out it uses a technique that some people think is the worst thing ever, but that I honestly didn’t know was a trick, I just knew it made the hits look incredibly brutal and exciting. Turns out that this, Donnie Yen’s RAGING FIRE and some South Korean movies have been using a new thing where they shoot multiple passes of the fight choreography, including the actors hitting pads at full force, and composite them together to make some of the hits look extra punishing.
I know I’ll be called stupid for this, but this is the truth, I did not notice what was supposedly fake looking in the fights either the first time through or when I went through and watched some of them again after knowing what they did. I mean other than that the punches look too fast and hard to not hurt. But that’s part of why the fights are exciting. There’s not much I can say. I still run into people who have a puritanical rejection of filming at different speeds as part of the art form of cinematic fighting. There are people who don’t like wires. There are even people who think fights should be realistic (!?). Any tool you can use, somebody is gonna think it’s an abomination. I’m not religious so I thought these fights were great. I will try to respect if you can’t partake but I hope you’ll reciprocate.
The stunt coordinator is Garrett Warren (MEAN GUNS, MODERN VAMPIRES, INLAND EMPIRE, BEOWULF, GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS 2, COLOMBIANA, REAL STEEL, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, LOGAN, also a frequent stunt double for Mickey Rourke and for Dolph Lundgren on JOSHUA TREE) and the fight coordinator is Steve Brown (second unit stunt coordinator for AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER). I guess they both have lots of experience integrating stunts and visual FX, it makes sense. But I wouldn’t have known if not for the pitchforks.
Many people seem to hate this movie, I honestly don’t understand why, but there’s little incentive to convince them otherwise. There are plenty of extra-cinematic reasons to not support it, whether or not you’re open minded about remaking one of the greats. And honestly how can you even support it anyway, it’s not in theaters and they’ll probly never put it on disc, it’s just part of their portfolio or whatever. But the movie itself is the kind of thing I love: one of today’s most interesting actors fully dedicating himself to a straight ahead action movie, one with joyful uses of all the best tropes, colorful characters, inventive fights, lots of laughs, many grace notes I didn’t mention, nice to look at. It’s just a great time not at the movies. If they’d released it like a real movie I bet it would’ve lasted okay. But I for one will remember it fondly.
p.s. I’m an o.g. because I reviewed the first straight-to-video ROAD HOUSE follow-up when it came out eighteen years ago. (I was dumber then, though. Now I’m wise.)
March 25th, 2024 at 7:58 am
I loved it!
I keep seeing people saying “it takes itself too seriously” but I thought the complete opposite-I thought it was very self-aware and didn’t take itself super serioisly at all, which is why it worked.
It didn’t try to be the original. It was a very simple “stranger from out of town befriends the locals and helps them deal with the corrupt, rich bad guys” schtick.
I laughed out loud over the “Road House” name explanation.
Really enjoyable watch.