Road House

3 outta 5

Road House is a movie that is primarily concerned with bar fights, mostly set in a bar, featuring lots and lots of fights inside or outside of said bar. It is a straightforward remake of the straightforward 1989 film. What makes this worthwhile are some decent quips and enjoyably crunchy action that comes at a frequent clip. If anything, the film could have shaved about 20 minutes off its running time by cutting back on numerous scenes involving bookstore owners and chatting with bar employees. It doesn’t reinvent the action genre, but it is an enjoyable throwback. Although the film not using the original film’s iconic over-the-top throat ripping is a miss.

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a down on his lucky disgraced former UFC fighter and the owner of a dive bar, Frankie (Jessica Williams), offers him a job as a bouncer. Her bar, The Road House, is frequently disrupted by local ruffians. Travelling down to the Florida Keys, Dalton befriends the owners of a local bookstore, Charlie (Hannah Lanier) and her father, Stephen (Kevin Carroll) and Dalton beats up the local goons. It turns out they are being led by a mob boss and land developer, Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen) who wants to get rid of the Road House to put up high priced real-estate. But as Dalton is continually throwing the goons out, Brandt’s incarcerated father sends a crazy head smasher, Knox (Conor McGregor) to take Dalton out. Meanwhile, Dalton is romancing a local doctor, Ellie (Daniela Melchior) who is the daughter of a corrupt sheriff (Joaquim de Almeida), leading all parties to an inevitable confrontation that would involve a lot of mayhem.

Gyllenhaal is inheriting a role originally played by Patrick Swayze and he has the same feel of a soft spoken zen master who also busts heads. But Gyellenhaal’s Dalton is given a mandatory tragic backstory and multiple traumatic dream flashbacks of when he killed another fighter in the UFC ring. There is one good character moment by Gyllenhaal when he says that he is afraid of being set off because he thinks he’ll do horrible things to people. Whenever Dalton gets into a fight, he usually dispatches the goons with ease, like in the first big fight he has where Dalton literally smacks the hell out of them and then drives them to the hospital to get fixed up. He is very quick with some great quips, like when Knox fights him in a boat and Knox says, “Our very own Octagon!” (a not-so-subtle shout out to McGregor’s UFC days) and Dalton snaps back, “What? Who taught you shapes?” Or when Knox is bashing Dalton’s head against a piano and Dalton notes that it is out of tune.

This film doesn’t take a lot of things directly from the original film, it is mostly some character names, the setting, and the title. One thing that is memorable from the original is having Dalton rip out the throats of his foes, and that doesn’t happen here which is an odd thing to leave out of a Road House movie. Dalton here does deliver a fatal throat punch which is close but not enough. Another very ‘80s thing about the original was the completely gratuitous sex scene in the middle of the film, but here the closest they get is Dalton and Ellie kissing on a beach. Melchior’s Ellie is basically just there to snap at Dalton when he brings in all the bruised folks from his first fight, then she softens and delivers a bunch of plot exposition, then she is used as kidnap bait in the finale.

The bad guys are appropriately nasty. Magnussen as Brandt is a total snivelling rich boy turned wannabe gangster and all he really does is whine. His introductory scene shows that this isn’t a very bright fellow as he’s on a rocking yacht but demanding a razor shave and the guy keeps nicking him, so Brandt gets up and clocks the boat captain. As the corrupt Sheriff, Joaquim de Almeida basically plays the same snarling angry guy he often does, and he has an evil monologue to Dalton that is effective if cliched. Getting the rare “Introducing” credit in his first feature film, McGregor as Knox has a giant grin on his face as he does crazy acts of violence and McGregor is fun, and the final brawl between Knox and Dalton is very heavy on smashing. It may not have a throat rip but the way that Knox is dispatched is pretty brutal, and he is at the centre of an amusing mid-credits stinger. As the owner of the bar, Williams has a few good lines about the violence erupting, although there is a bit too much about Dalton and his fellow employees that is never that interesting. To prove he’s a nice guy, Dalton befriends the family bookstore but they’re mostly just there to be put in peril.

The fights in Road House are probably the best thing going for it and director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow) delivers an impact. The fights are fast and look like they hurt, which is key. There have been more elaborate action movies, but for just fist against face smashing, this delivers.