If you’re anything like me, when you heard Jake Gyllenhaal would be starring in a remake of “Road House,” you probably thought … why?
1989’s “Road House” is the type of movie that simply doesn’t exist anymore, a trash action masterpiece that gets more ridiculous as the minutes tick by (it was directed by a guy whose name is literally Rowdy – how could we expect anything less?). “Road House” is one of the more boisterous works in the 80s action canon, and what makes it work, miraculously, is the movie star at its center, Patrick Swayze.
As Dalton, a somehow world-famous bouncer (nay, cooler) called in to clean up the scumbag reputation of a roadside bar called the Double Deuce, Swayze delivers on everything that made him special as a movie star. His version of the character is cool as a cucumber, sensitive and soulful, with an underlying physicality that’s akin to a jungle cat. Against all odds, he is able to ground “Road House” – a movie in which someone drives a monster truck through a car dealership window, Ben Gazzara throws naked pool parties, and Swayze himself literally rips a man’s throat out – with an intensity and earnestness that’s difficult to overstate.
So, how could one make “Road House” in this day and age? The trick is to not try and be too much like the original. “Road House” feels more akin to something like 2008’s “Never Back Down” than it does its source material, albeit with better actors at the helm (for the most part). It’s not perfect, or really even great, by any means, but it does fit comfortably into the oeuvre of the trashy, Florida cinema canon, with all the sweaty, goofy action that entails. Gyllenhaal does not have the same strengths as Swayze, and thankfully, the movie does not try to fit his version of Dalton into that mold. Instead, the filmmakers let Gyllenhaal do what Gyllenhaal does best – be a charismatic psychopath.
2024’s “Road House” gives Dalton more of a backstory than the 1989 original, casting him as a former UFC middleweight with a dark past he’s trying to escape. When Frankie (Jessica Williams) sees him win an underground fight by simply revealing who he is and scaring the other guy off, she approaches him with a proposition – she owns a roadhouse (creatively named The Road House) down in the Florida Keys, and a few of the regulars are getting a little too rowdy for her tastes. Would Dalton be interested in coming down to help her clean the place up?
Of course there’s more to the story here, including a corrupt sheriff (Joaquim de Almeida), an evil wannabe real estate tycoon (Billy Magnussen), and an over the top henchman (Conor McGregor) who are hell bent on making sure Dalton doesn’t make it out of this town alive. This potent mixture of testosterone leads to plenty of bar fights, and I must say – is there any better setting for a fistfight than Florida? Florida makes everything that much sweatier, that much more colorful, that much more tawdry. There’s just something visceral about what Florida brings to the table, and you can really feel the dusty, beer-soaked floor of that tiki bar like it was you being body-slammed against it instead of Dalton’s latest victim.
While that tactile nature shines through, the fights themselves can be hit or miss. They’re often shot from the perspective of someone in the fight and with a kinetic, whirling energy that can make you feel as disoriented as you might be if you were the one actually doing the fighting. While that adds an intensity to those sequences, it often feels more like you’re in a video game than watching a movie – and that means it often looks like a video game too, with all the surreal uncanniness that brings. There are a few standouts, including Dalton’s first fight with the biker gang that’s harassing patrons and staff. Most of what makes that fight work, however, comes down to choreography and performance, not the camera work, as Dalton mows through each of the bikers by slapping them down, one by one.
Gyllenhaal is really the stand out of “Road House,” which is hard to do considering the premise is so deeply connected to such a different type of star. This version of Dalton has Swayze’s calmness, but there’s also that underlying mania that Gyllenhaal brings to his best performances. In the 1989 film, when Dalton does the aforementioned throat ripping, there’s a tortured kind of brokenness in the way he screams afterwards, like a man who has been pushed to the point of violence and can’t stand what he’s become. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, might tell us that he’s scared of what he might do if he’s pushed too far, but when he hits that breaking point he leans into the delightful lunacy of it all. Someone in the film describes him as a Mr. Rogers-type – right up to the second that he wipes the floor with you – and that’s really not too far off. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton has a friendly way about him that makes his propensity for knowing exactly where to stab you to inflict maximum pain all the more unnerving and brilliant to watch.
As “Road House” goes along, it gets a little darker than it can handle, that mixture of Looney Tunes and psycho energies not quite meshing as well as you might like. But even with its flaws, it’s pretty impressive that “Road House” has once again proved itself to be a pretty reliable movie star vehicle.