The original 1989 film Road House is not a great movie. But it’s become a cult classic because of lots of little elements that add up to something bigger and better than the sum of their parts: Patrick Swayze (the Hollywood hunk who had been a world class ballet dancer) was born to play James Dalton — a gifted bar bouncer with a PhD in philosophy from New York University.
One of the film’s great strengths is Dalton’s relationship with his mentor, Wade Garrett played by Sam Elliot in one of his most unforgettable roles. Kelly Lynch was never a household name as an actress, but I can’t imagine anyone but Lynch as Dr. Elizabeth Clay, Dalton’s much-needed general practitioner and love interest. The Road House screenplay is studded with timeless, quotable dialog like “I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead,” “Nobody ever wins a fight,” and “Pain don’t hurt.” Road House boasts the great Ben Gazzara in the role of big bucks baddie, Brad Wesley, and the whole movie shakes and rattles to the bar band blues of The Jeff Healey Band who are cast as the house act at the Double Deuce saloon. Road House is red meat for movie fans who love fisticuffs on film. It’s a bloody knuckle actioner that’s literally directed by a guy named Rowdy (Herrington).
Jake Gyllenhall plays Elwood Dalton in Amazon’s new Road House reboot. This Dalton is a former mixed martial arts fighter who now makes his living off the easy money in the world of underground fighting, where Dalton’s reputation precedes him and all of his opponents forfeit their purses. Dalton meets Frankie, a bar owner in Glass Key, FL. Frankie gives Dalton her contact info, and after he bails out of a suicide attempt, he takes Frankie’s offer to clean-up the ruffian clientele ruining her business at The Road House.
This new version of Road House is being criticized for not being as bonkers or hilarious as the original film. I think director Doug Liman makes a good choice to consciously avoid those things in this new movie. I think he understands that he could never match the weird energy that Rowdy and his cast captured in their film. Instead he gives us an attempted suicide in the first ten minutes of the movie. There’s humor here and some weirdness, but this is not Generation X’s Road House. That’s a good thing. We’ve already got one of those.
One of the most interesting aspects of the new Road House is the postmodern meta-narrative created between Dalton and Roxie and Steven — the teenage daughter and father who own a modest but charming bookstore. The three meet when Dalton arrives in Glass Key at the bus stop outside of the bookstore. Roxie offers Dalton a booklet she made to fill newcomers in on local Glass Key sites and history. When Dalton tells her he’s in town to clean up The Road House. Roxie says it sounds like the plot of a Western novel before finding a novel from the 1950’s that exactly matches the plot of the movie.
As Dalton battles the baddies and tries to figure out why they’re so interested in closing The Road House, he and Roxie sort-out the mystery together. All the while lots of her dialog simultaneously comments on the story in the film, and the film itself, and the western genre. Not everybody wants a Road House reboot with a postmodern meta-narrative. I get that. But, this Road House is worth a stop.
Road House is streaming on Amazon Prime
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.