On March 21, the Prime Video service released the action movie Road House directed by Doug Liman. His filmography includes such popular action films as The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the sci-fi blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow. It is a remake of the 1989 film Roadhouse starring Patrick Swayze. In the review below we tell you what the new variation of the old story offers.
Pros:
exciting and well-choreographed fight scenes; good performance from Jake Gyllenhaal; humor appropriately defuses the situation; overall genre-authentic cinema
Minuses:
standard action movie with no surprises; the dynamics noticeably sags in moments, but the original film suffered from this even more; Conor McGregor’s acting skills
“House by the Road” / Road House
Genre Action
director Doug Liman
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Conor McGregor, Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, Post Malone
Prime Video Premiere
Year of manufacture 2024
IMDb website
After undefeated underground fighting star Carter Ford sees his next opponent in the opposite corner of the ring, he immediately folds and refuses the money. The guy’s sudden instinct for self-preservation is triggered by the dubious prospect of coming face to face with former professional UFC fighter Elwood Dalton, who simply takes the cash and walks away.
On the street, the hero is approached by a young woman who offers Dalton a job as a bouncer at her beach bar in the Florida Keys, which is constantly attacked by local bikers. Having covered the knife wound received from an ill-wisher with tape, the man politely refuses the offer and was about to decide to throw himself under the train, but at the last moment something stops him. Elwood decides to help the suffering businesswoman, but soon realizes that he is faced with someone more dangerous than a gang of deranged drunks on iron horses.
“Road House” inherits the plot framework of its predecessor, the eponymous cult hit of the VHS era with Patrick Swayze, but differs significantly from it in detail.
The new film, as expected, abandons those features of a long-gone era that today would be considered bad taste. Thus, in the 1989 film, almost in the very first frame the camera focuses on slender female legs, not to mention the subsequent exposure of the beauties. In the remake, you can count on the maximum of Conor McGregor’s buttocks, although our cinema here seems to be masculine, so the creators could do without this erotic performance.
In addition, Doug Liman and screenwriters Chuck Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi decided to diversify the continuous massacres with scenes on the water, add dynamics and humor, and add a dramatic background to the biography of the main character, meager in details. All these changes were clearly beneficial and made us forget that strange and silly things sometimes happen on the screen. This can be called a scene somewhere from the horror movie “Lake Placid. Lake of Fear”, which appears like a bolt from the blue. However, just like 35 years ago, action films are now valued not for their vital dialogue or the coherence of the plot, but for the tangible integrity of the conflict, when the viewer willingly roots for the side of good, and, above all, for the staging of battle scenes. There are no particular problems with this here. The camera actively dances around the brutal bullies, the sounds of blows to the jaw are heard with the frequency of almost a machine gun burst, Conor McGregor grins irritably into the lens.
Interestingly, the old Roadhouse unabashedly used classic Western story arcs where the protagonist arrives in a seedy, rotten, and lawless town dominated by a gang led by a vile villain. The protagonist has the courage to challenge the scoundrel, and at the same time conquer the first beauty in the village, from which he triumphantly rides off into the sunset.
The remake delicately makes fun of this aspect: one of the heroines directly says that Dalton’s story sounds like the beginning of some kind of western, plus there is even a place for a typical corrupt sheriff. Obviously, a cast of archetypal characters and a lack of interesting plot twists are not the factors that persuade people to watch it. For example, a girl and her dad who own a bookstore exist purely as functional heroes, so their storyline is terribly predictable. But in the process it is unlikely that there will be a great desire to pay attention to this, because there is such order here with healthy and unhealthy idiocy, and most importantly – action. The film has the power to entertain.
Jake Gyllenhaal, seasoned from his experience filming fight scenes in Antoine Fuqua’s boxing drama Southpaw, looks gorgeous as the tough fighter with a heavy load of guilt in his heart. McGregor seems to have decided that he is on the set of the action movie Adrenaline, so he is balancing on the brink of the image of a tattooed monkey and a killing machine. If the first is a complete cringe, then the second, not surprisingly, is performed very confidently. The role of the bar owner went to Jessica Williams, whom you could see in last year’s dramedy “Truth Therapy,” and the popular singer Post Malone appeared in a cameo. By the way, after watching, I couldn’t help but think that if Patrick Swayze were still with us, he could also appear in a cameo role and play the imprisoned father of the antagonist, who was never shown to us.
“Road House,” although a very passable movie, is fun and exciting enough to take another look at how muscular men beat each other with all their might for the amusement of the public. Especially if she grew up on the good old “bashki” with Dacascas or Van Damme.
Conclusion:
“Road House” is notable for its action scenes, which is the most important indicator for the action genre. Unfortunately, it was not possible to go all the way in one go: where the plot deviates from concentrated combat, it has nothing to offer in return. And yet, this remake definitely deserves the attention of fans of the genre and the original film.
