No one ever called the original Road House a thinking man’s action flick, but they might now thanks to this dumbed-down remake. Think about that for a second. Think about what it entails to dumb down fucking Road House — and somehow they did it; a lot of people get socked in the face in this movie, but it’s the filmmakers who seem to have been punch-drunk.
Frankie (Jessica Williams) owns “a roadhouse out in the Florida Keys.” She attends an underground bareknuckle fighting event, hoping to hire Carter Ford (Post Malone) as her new bouncer. She asks the bartender to point Carter out for her; the bartender indicates the ring where two guys are going at it. “I hope he’s not the bald one,” says Frankie, even though they’re both technically bald.
It makes no difference, though, because she’s quickly taken with Elwood Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is to be Carter’s seventh opponent of the night; Carter, however, takes one look at Dalton and immediately forfeits the fight and his winnings.
Here we’re meant to go, ‘Wow! Dalton is such a badass that a guy who just beat six other dudes in a row is afraid of him!’ What I’m actually thinking is, ‘Wow! Dalton is such a fucking pussy he has to pick a fight with a guy who has already fought six other dudes in a row!’
It turns out that Dalton is a former UFC fighter who has fallen from grace (that’s a rather short fall). Frankie is inexplicably impressed by Dalton’s “little scam … All you need is for the opponent to know who you are … Know your history, and then they’ll be too afraid to fight. That’s fuckin’ brilliant, man.” Is it really, though? Frankie offers Dalton the job and, following a token show of resistance, he takes it. None of this makes any fucking sense for several reasons.
1) since Frankie didn’t see Dalton in action and therefore doesn’t know how rusty he may or may not be (and logic dictates he should be at least somewhat rusty, considering that his livelihood consists of avoiding fights) she’s hiring him based solely on his reputation, which is that of a loose cannon who killed his friend in the Octagon.
That sounds like a liability waiting to happen that any sane business owner wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Isn’t Frankie worried that Dalton might scare off all customers and not just “the wrong clientele”?
After all, this isn’t a rough-and-tumble dive — which was the reason that the owner of the Double Deuce hired Patrick Swayze in the first place: to bring peace to the bar so the owner could turn it into a fancy place not unlike, I imagine, Frankie’s bar.
2) this is a film that self-consciously refers to itself as a western (whereas the original went the more subtle way of simply giving its characters western-sounding names) but is nonetheless unaware that the biggest, baddest (gun)fighter always has a huge target painted on his back.
Seems to me that a slack-jawed yokel like Carter would be all too eager to prove his mettle against Dalton the Friend-Killer (not that it matters, given that the writers established this aspect of the character only to immediately forget all about it).
3) Frankie decides that Dalton would be “better” than Carter for the job, but why? What makes a mixed martial artist a better bouncer than a bareknuckle fighter? In fact, what makes either of them any good at all? Why not just get, you know, an actual, professional experienced bouncer? Well, Frankie claims that “All my fuckin’ bouncers have ran [sic] off,” leading her to realize that she “needed some outside help.”
Frankie’s problem is that she’s not savvy to the nuances of the bouncing profession as understood by and outlined in the original movie; she assumes that dealing out and absorbing physical punishment is all that there is to it. I don’t blame her because she can’t very well go and watch the first Road House; what’s director Doug Liman’s excuse, though?
Swayze’s Dalton was a bona fide ass-kicker, but he was most certainly not a roided-up meathead. He was as well versed in the business of bouncing — which he had effectively elevated into a science, a lifestyle, and a personal philosophy — as he was in the business of administration.
Dalton-Swayze wasn’t just a bouncer; he was officially the head-bouncer (i.e., the “cooler”) but also the de-facto manager of the Double Deuce; as such, his first step to cleaning up the bar was cleaning house — pink-slipping the dead weight and lecturing the remaining employees “on the fine points of bouncing.”
The premise of a ‘bouncer whisperer,’ as it were, may seem quite silly on the surface, but it was handled in a deceptively insightful manner and provided some of that film’s highlights (if you believe like I do that actual work is more interesting than most plots) before it degenerated into a punchy-kicky free-for-all — which is exactly what this remake is from beginning to end except for a couple of non-bouncing-related subplots that only succeed in making the movie 30 minutes too long.
Then again, to see in a bouncer something more than a glorified barroom brawler requires imagination, and Liman and writers Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry have none. Frankie’s roadhouse is literally called “The Road House,” and the name of the boat where Dalton stays is “The Boat.” This would be funny were it not that lazy writing isn’t the least bit amusing.
Speaking of names, at one point the town’s corrupt sheriff tells Dalton, “Your name reminds me of that Johnny Cash song … ‘A Boy Named Sue.’ Dad gave his son a girl’s name so he’d grow up tough.” Huh? What the fuck are you babbling about? Elwood is a boy’s name, and a damn cool one at that (ever heard of Elwood J. Blues?).
Was it really that hard to give the protagonist a first name that would make the sheriff’s lines not sound completely fucking retarded? But then, I guess we should be grateful that they bothered to name him at all, as opposed to just calling him ‘The Hero.’
And then there’s Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen), who wants to “build some bullshit resort for a bunch of rich assholes” but “needs the Road House to do it.” That’s an 80s plot if I ever heard one, and yet even the original managed to avoid it.
Ben’s, ahem, master plan involves sending his goons to the bar every night and raise hell heck without getting rowdy enough that the place would otherwise be empty.
Why doesn’t Ben just get the police, whom he has in his pocket, to shut the place down on trumped-up health code violations? Or better yet, just burn the fucking thing down to the ground? I suppose that would be too smart for a moron whom we first meet getting a shave on a rocky boat and complaining about the cuts.
Sooner than later you have to wonder, is everyone in this film supposed to be a world-class fucking idiot? Or is it just a big coincidence? If it was a deliberate choice, let me just tell you that stupidity isn’t any more entertaining than laziness.
The original was infinitely funnier without even trying (“Pain don’t hurt;” “I see you found my trophy room, DaIton. The onIy thing that’s missing… is your ass;” “I used to fuck guys Iike you in prison;” etc.).
Not only is the remake painfully obtuse, but it plays the idiocy straight (if nothing else, the filmmakers knew it was useless to parody a self-parody). It’s as if they purposely set out to make a big, dumb actioner in the vain hope that unintentional comedy lightning would strike twice, in the process forgoing the spontaneous abandon of the original.
All of the above notwithstanding, Road House’s biggest individual misfire is the casting of Conor McGregor as the least menacing villain this side of Rami Malek in No Time to Die.
I don’t care how jacked this assclown is; playing a “fucking psycho” demands range, and this conceited Cro-Magnon bastard couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag (Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast would bite his head off without missing a beat). Moreover, since the buffoonish asshole is only pretend fighting, there’s no reason to want to watch him.
Fuck Conor McGregor, and fuck this movie that reminds me of the lyrics to a Doors song: “We’re going to the roadhouse/Gonna have a real good time.” Not this time, though.
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