Road House

Before I start here I want to make clear that I’ve never really had much love for the original Road House. When it came out I appeared to be the only one of of my social circle who wasn’t obsessed with it. When I revisited it in later years, to see if my opinion had altered, what I found was a film that has a good central lead in Swayze, but was still a pretty terrible film that would sit nicely in a bargain bin DVD rack in a petrol station. So, without any beholden adoration of that earlier film, I watched this updated version pretty much on its own merits.

In this updated tale Jake Gyllenhaal plays an ex-UFC fighter, Elwood Dalton, who earns money on the underground fighting circuit, having stepped out of the professional arena after a fight that went tragically wrong. He finds himself approached by Frankie (Jessica Williams), the owner of a bar in the Florida Keys called The Road House, which has found itself the target of biker gangs, who are sent to intimidate Frankie into closing up and selling the land to developer Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen). Dalton reluctantly takes the gig, keeping a calm mannered approach to trouble, but calmly displaying his fighting skills when the need arises. However, things start to escalate as Brandt’s father sends in his psychotic enforcer, Knox (Connor McGregor) to move things along.

This film is still quite basic and dumb with the plot, much like the original, but it has a lot more energy and fun that help it carry along better than the Swayze version. Doug Liman directs action with a slickness and sometimes brutal manner, although a few moments of CGI elements do, sadly, undo a lot of the otherwise thrillingly superb work. The strong choreography on display in some of the key moments, usually with Dalton calmly dispatching of multiple attackers at once, allows you to look past the CGI touches and enjoy the thrill on offer.

Gyllenhaal captivates in the central lead, with his subdued nature and somewhat nonchalant attitude contrasting well with his physicality. An early scene were he dispatches a gang of bikers is brutal, slick, and hilarious at once – especially when followed up with Dalton then driving those he injured to the hospital (allowing an unnecessary love interest in the guise of Ellie, played well by Daniela Melchior). That early scene also leads to an ongoing amusement with one of the gang seemingly taking a friendly liking to Dalton, despite him having had his arm broken by him, and exchanging pleasantries in later confrontations. It is in the casual levity of such moments that the film is lifted somewhat, making it almost cartoony in nature, but in a good way.

This is a throwback to 80s style of action film nonsense, only given a modern edge to it. It is nonsense, and knows it, so simply churns out what would be cinematic fun of the kind that you leave your brain at the door, had Amazon not chosen to drop it directly onto their service (something that irked director Doug Liman a great deal).

The weakest element, however, is in the casting of Conor McGregor as Knox. Yes, he has physicality, but his whole character takes a step too far into pantomime villain territory, and McGregor is certainly no actor. Offering psychotic threat and menace in an over exuberant manner, he stands out like a sore thumb in moments when things should be more grounded.

But, overall, this is Gyllenhaal’s film, and he more than sells the central role of Dalton, allowing us to simply enjoy the simple throwback action nonsense on offer.