JAKE GYLLENHAAL stars in ROADHOUSE Photo: LAURA RADFORD © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
ROAD HOUSE
Rated R, 2 hours and 1 minute
Directed by: Doug Liman
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Conor McGregor, Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, Joaquim de Almeida, Lukas Gage, B.K. Cannon, Arturo Castro, JD Pardo, Catfish Jean, Kevin Carroll, Hannah Love Lanier
If you can divorce yourself slightly from your affinity towards 1989’s ROAD HOUSE, then the contemporized Doug Liman-directed re-fashioning will assuredly serve to entertain with its silly, stupid and entirely self-aware antics. Swapping a sweaty Missourian honky-tonk for a salt-air Floridian roadhouse, and a sexy Patrick Swayze for a snarky Jake Gyllenhaal, this reimagining repackages what we all love about the original and puts a bombastic spin on the nuevo-Western shenanigans. It’s not perfect, but it’s perfectly suitable for an audience craving rowdy, raucous revelry.
Dalton (Gyllenhaal) never expected he’d wind up in the Florida Keys, but his life has taken drastic turns. Running from his past as a famous UFC fighter, he now prefers to pay a karmic penance, laying low as a drifter with nothing left to lose. But when Frankie (Jessica Williams) shows up to an underground fight desperate for a bouncer for her roadside bar that attracts disorderly locals, Dalton’s curiosity is piqued. She’s sick of the unruly clientele ruining the joint on a nightly basis and needs help fending off scoundrels – specifically a pack of scumbags sent by Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen), the rotten son of a jailed real estate developer who’s hell-bent on shutting the bar down for reasons audiences suspect before the other characters do.
As Dalton breezes into town, he’s introduced to Charlie (Hannah Love Lanier), the precocious tween daughter of a widowed bookstore owner (Kevin Carroll), who chats his ears off about a tree that grows in the middle of a freeway (a metaphor!). Rolling up to the meta-named “the Road House” in the sobering sunlight, he meets the staff, waiter Billy (Lukas Gage) and Laura (B.K. Cannon), and is later exposed to Ben’s bullies, including Del (JD Pardo), Clyde (Catfish Jean) and Moe (Arturo Castro). Word travels fast that Dalton is not someone to be trifled with and Ben unleashes his full fury, sending the corrupt sheriff (Joaquim de Almeida) after him, as well as hiring deranged mercenary Knox (Conor McGregor) to kill him.
Liman, along with screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry (who work off the blueprint laid by David Lee Henry and Hilary Henkin), delivers grounded stakes in a stiflingly humid, semi-heightened atmosphere where CG-assisted punches connote a breakneck, snappy energy. They abandon the practicality of the original’s fisticuffs, trading it for a more fluid artifice that feels completely at home in this rough and tumble space. Well, almost. The ropey aesthetics in the sequence where a truck attempts to run over Dalton are notably terrible. This sequence’s saving lunacy is that the perpetrator was on a date when attempting murder. Later, a few digitally manipulated bar patrons hopping on a catamaran hanging from the roof during an all-hands barroom brawl is also fairly cringe-worthy. However, its audacious nature to exist in the first place makes this scene passable.
The filmmakers astutely know the action is between Dalton and the cadre of criminal forces bearing down on him, so they don’t place much emphasis on his budding love affair with doctor Ellie (Daniela Melchior). Though heat is lacking between Gyllenhaal and Melchoir, there’s a good antagonistic, sinister spark between Gyllenhaal and Magnussen, as demonstrated in the bar scene where Ben gets under Dalton’s skin as the background sound drops out.
What Gyllenhaal lacks in Swayze’s burning, sexy swagger, he makes up for in acerbic sarcasm and sardonic tone. His tongue is the largest muscle he flexes during the film. Instead of the tai chi Swayze’s Dalton uses to calm himself, Gyllenhaal’s Dalton uses reason and rationality to defuse tense situations. McGregor, whose unhinged physicality comes with a cartoonishly delirious smile and bouncy videogame-esque walk, is great as the unrelenting muscle. His character is a big, beefy manifestation of the burdensome trauma and grief Dalton’s been carrying for years.
Overall, Liman and co create a remake that’s high on fun, offering a different, but equally scrappy permutation of a beloved character and his conundrums. It makes great use of its soundtrack – an inherited trait from the original – and contains the best needle drop of The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” since COCKTAIL. Though there’s an overly optimistic, sequel-baiting mid-credits tag employed, you’ll feel wholly satiated by the beer and bar nuts this picture serves.
Grade: B
ROAD HOUSE begins streaming on Prime Video on March 21.
