Roadhouse (2024): An HATM Review

It is impossible to watch the new Jake Gyllenhaal-led Road House without thinking of the original brought to us thirty-five years ago. And this is for good measure. Road House (1989) stands as one of the most rewatchable films of its era and in my mind, the greatest B-movie ever made. Fortunately, this is something the remake knows and understands, and in fact leans into. So it is impossible to talk about this movie without also talking about the film that inspired it.

One of the great things about 1989’s Road House is how of the era it feels, especially in the three and a half decades since. Our protagonist was Patrick Swayze, in the middle of an epic run that included Red Dawn (1984), Dirty Dancing (1987), Next of Kin (1989), Ghost (1990), and Point Break (1991).¹ You also had Sam Elliott, you stole the film from its star, something he has a tendency to do. Kelly Lynch played opposite Swayze as the local girl next door with an M.D. Ben Gazzara and Marshall Teague were the big bads. There is gratuitous nudity and the Jeff Healey Band. And there is the hair. So many mullets. And the smoking, everywhere. The movie at times feels rusty and dirty, as though I might get tetanus just watching it.

This movie has none of those things, though it roughly follows the original’s plot and structure. More reviews will point to the fact that this movie is entirely self-aware. So much so that Hannah Lanier’s Charlie openly compares Elwood Dalton (we finally get a first name) to the hero in an old western. And in fact, that’s what both the original and this film are: Westerns.

One of the interesting choices made in this film, and I think to its credit, is setting it in the Florida Keys. In place of Joplin, Missouri, the Keys are the West, something that Floridians know well. Beyond their tourist facade, the islands of the archipelago are nothing more than small towns whose residents have deep and intimate ties (Netflix’s Bloodline showed this exceptionally well). The Keys also lie in the American imagination as an odd mix of pleasure and hypermasculinity. The movie relies upon this, citing the eponymous bar as a place where Ernest Hemingway used to hang. It is a saloon on the lawless frontier, with our new Dalton as a sort of Low Tide Drifter.

This Dalton also has a shadow hanging over him. He also killed a man, though instead of ripping his fucking throat out, he beat him to a pulp in a former life as a UFC fighter. What he doesn’t have in this film, however, is a mentor figure (admit it, you read that line about the throat in Elliott’s voice) to guide and challenge him along the way, nor whose death to compel Dalton into action. This movie needs its own Merlin, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Wade Garrett, and we know this because we spend half the movie waiting for him to arrive. As a result, the film has far lower stakes than its predecessor.

One of the things crippling the movie is that it never threatens our hero. Our villains are mostly a bunch of goobers. Mayans M.C.’s JD Pardo is wasted as the leader of an outlaw horsethief biker gang. One the unlikely things that worked for the original is that Ben Gazzara was absolutely threatening as Brad Wesley, the man who brought J.C. Penney to Joplin. There is nothing menacing about Billy Magnussen’s Ben Brandt.

The fights are a chaotic mess, and feel like a disappointment when you consider that director Doug Liman is the same man who brought forth such kinetic energy in the first Jason Bourne film that it dictated the look of action movies for the following twenty years. But this movie doesn’t have that look. Instead of Borne we get some sort of combat mimicking what we might see in a first person shooter video game. It’s not pleasing to the eye, nor to the mental synapses trying to make sense of them.

And speaking of chaos, there is the casting of Conor McGregor, who is an absolute disaster for this movie. I’m nearly certain his lines were dubbed in post-production. McGregor cannot act at all. His mere presence takes you out of the film and his casting seems to represent a doubt on the part of the producers that the film could sell itself on its own. In a movie that is not aiming to be good, he is awful. His Knox has zero menace. He is a clown. Marshall Teague’s Jimmy would have fucked him in prison.

There’s a real lack of chemistry in the film. You absolutely bought in on Swayze and Lynch, knowing exactly what was going to occur as soon as he tuned into Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine.” There’s no such heat between Gyllenhaal and Daniela Melchior’s Ellie, perhaps owing to their *checks notes* sixteen-year age difference. One of the strengths of the original is that the secondary and tertiary characters felt fleshed out. You had an idea of who the waitress Carrie Ann was. There was also Big Fat Bouncer Guy and Smoking Bouncer Guy with a Mullet. There was Knife Guy. And Polar Bear Guy. And Emmet, who would feel a lot better if you got off of him. We get a bit of that in this, with BK. Cannon’s Laura a likeable stand in for Carrie Ann. But mostly the costars kind of blend into the background. Joaquim de Almeida, so good years ago in Clear and Present Danger, is taking a paycheck.

There are some parts that this film really nails, though. The general vibe of fictional Glass Key feels real enough. Fred the Tree is real and should be seen. Dalton’s immediate addiction to Cuban coffee is, in the experience of this reviewer, incredibly accurate. And what threatens our heroes in this film is not goofy Brandt or even goofier Knox, it is the threat of overdevelopment, something most Floridians are all too familiar with, and see it as their governor eases development restrictions and imperils wildlife behind his lifted boots. There is a sense in this film, as among many in the audience, that Old Florida is dying.

Maybe if the original film never existed, you could watch this movie on a random weekend night while flipping through your phone and enjoy it. To his credit, Jake Gyllenhaal is a different and fun Dalton. Otherwise, my guess is that this film will fade from memory like so many other things after too many drinks.

Pain don’t hurt. But this movie does.

JWH

1. Don’t sleep on 1987’s straight-to-video Steel Dawn, starring Swayze as a post-apocalyptic swordsman.