3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Road House

2024, Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) -- Amazon

I was not a huge fan of the first movie, but I have always liked the stoic man of skill & violence who wanders into town to make things right, ala your classic western. Good thing one of the supporting characters in this movie sees that connection, and also comments on it. So much of this remake of the 1989 Swayze movie is a nod & wink to the original. The original was not exactly Shakespeare so you cannot expect this to rise above its origins. But, it is a pretty good Friday night popcorn flick.

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal, Source Code) is an ex-UFC fighter who makes money on the underground fighting circuit by scaring his opponents to forfeit. That impresses Frankie (Jessica Williams, Booksmart) enough to offer him a job as bouncer at her roadhouse on the Florida Keys. The original called Swayze's character a cooler, basically a head-bouncer often tasked with de-escalating. I don't think de-escalation is the point of this movie. We want to see Dalton beat up Bad Guys in Reacher style "you guys don't want to do this" ways. Again, stoic western lone wanderer. 

I was actually looking forward to this movie; not sure why, but that the work-related funk I am currently in is not letting me focus on better movies. I have half a dozen of them in half-watched states. I am tempted to abandon my attempts at watching "better movies" and embracing the suck, i.e. watching a bunch of B and Z grade movies to sate the consumption part of my brain, maybe a short run of Nick Cage's massive catalog of late? Even watching terrible movies allows for the brain to view and dissect and capture some of the "magic" of movie making.

Not sure why you are repeating what you said already in the comments here. I know you think there is an "audience" but. for real, you know the audience is Kent and Kent already responded about stepping off the yellow brick road can only lead to ruin.

Anywayz, Dalton gets off a bus in the "town" of Glass Key. Towns in these movies are never more than a few businesses and focal points. Like small towns on older roads of the Trans-Canada highway, they don't have "downtowns", residential neighbourhoods or even a centre or industry. But obviously Glass Key has enough money and residents to fuel The Road House's income, as well as the Bad Guy's plan to knock it all down to build a resort.

Dalton is a haunted man, constantly reliving his last official UFC fight, which gets teased out over the entire movie. Yeah yeah, we know you killed someone, but sure, string us along about the how. But that's alright cuz he wins the respect of his coworkers pretty quickly, and the local night shift nurse/doctor (not really sure) Ellie (Daniela Melchior, Fast X). And he quickly runs afoul of said Bad Guy (Billy Magnussen, No Time to Die), after he sends great numbers of his henchmen to visit Ellie.

That is until Conor McGregor is sent in.

At this point, I find myself stumbling back into the lack of anything concrete to say.

This is not a terribly constructed movie, in fact, I rather like the way Liman puts the movie together. But it entirely lacks any substance, anything which would stick the movie in my memory. Besides how terrible Conor McGregor was -- I am pretty sure they just put him on the set and let him over/under act his way through every scene. At least they had the other Bad Guys react to him in the exact same manner as we did. I suppose with each of these violent movies, I am hoping to bump into the next John Wick which, in genre and purpose strove to create a similar beast.