Road House

In a film that dares to ask the question: “Hey, do you like punching?” a man named Dalton takes a job as a bouncer, in a roadhouse called The Road House, in a fictional lesser Florida Key, only to discover that this backwater paradise is not all that it seems.

As legend tells it, in 1989, one of the best worst movies ever was made.

And it was good.

Featuring Patrick Swayze as Dalton, the littlest kung fu master, and Sam Elliott as a sexy older gentleman bouncer, Road House was a film that left its mark on society. My stepdad’s brother passed out in the movie theatre after Patrick Swayze ripped the bad guy’s throat out, which probably totally ruined the viewing experience for the rest of the audience, as they then had to stop the film and make sure that there wasn’t a dead guy in the middle of the aisle.

He wasn’t alone in this either, all across America, people were passing out as the film’s laughably pyschotic Heavy, in his pooka shells and sleeveless button-up shirt, a character who is of course named Jimmy Reno, got his throat ripped out in a climatic moonlit battle with Swayxe.

This is a common thing to have happen in theatres. People used to do this all the time when Pulp Fiction was playing. You always knew when it was time for the big needle scene, because some green-around-the-gills, dad-shaped man would come stumbling out of the auditorium and vomit, or pass out, or both, all while the underpaid staff did their level best to not be the first one to notice.

Not me, of course.

I was always very concerned about my fellow citizens in distress.

Anyway, legend goes on to say that Mitch Glazer and Bill Murray first met when Glazer wrote an article on John Belushi in 1977, and they’ve been friends ever since. Glazer has been married to actress Kelly Lynch since 1982, who plays Dr Elizabeth Clay in Road House, the sexy blonde doctor lady who loves Swayze’s James Dalton, the tiny little ninja bad ass who takes a job as the head bouncer at the notorious Double Deuce bar, and finds no end of local trouble waiting there for him. So, as Kelly Lynch once explained: “Every time Road House is on, and Murray or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV—and they’re always watching TV—one of them calls my husband and says, ‘Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks.”

So, as the gods declared long ago, once a film reaches such illustrious heights, then Hollywood must revisit the beloved classic and attempt to recapture that glory.

Which is why we’re here today…

This time, Roadhouse’s unlikely star is none other than Donnie Darko himself, Jake Gyllenhaal, who’s honestly really great—and if you haven’t watched Nightcrawler yet, then you’re so wrong that I’m embarrassed for you. Also showing up as the bar owner is Jessica Williams from Shrinking, who’s is also really fantastic, but she is criminally underused here. Daniela Melchior, the actress who played Ratcatcher 2 in The Suicide Squad, plays Kelly Lynch’s role of the sexy Doctor, and she is indeed very sexy, but I’m sorry to report that at no point does Gyllenhaal throw her against the rocks. The film’s Heavy is played by none other than Conor McGregor, who is a swaggering, thick-necked cyclone of psychotic chaos in this film, just a big stupid cartoon of a brawling Irishman, nothing but a walking and talking real life parody of a bow-legged hairless gorilla doing a Popeye impersonation.

As mentioned, the podunk setting of this version is the fictional Glass Key in the Florida Keys, instead of wherever the first film took place… I want to say… a Carolina? It doesn’t really matter. The place is trash central. You can smell the thick dust of the junk stores, and the mildew in the old hot tubs. Is there a place called the White Trash Rivera? If not, there should be, and this place should be the capital. It’s a small town where everyone knows your name, and the cops are real crooked, but to be fair, that last part is true everywhere in America. But in Glass Key at least, there’s also a kindly bookstore owner, and a precociously friendly yet righteously truculent teen, as well as a kindly bar owner, with some kindly bartenders too. And of course, there’s also the sexy doctor. All in all, it’s just a bunch of good people in flip-flops, huddled together in a wide spot in the road they have the audacity to call a town, crammed in between the four-lane-freeway fumes and the swampy, man-o-war laden tides of the Atlantic Ocean off the tip of America’s syphilitic dick. Nothing but real salt of the Earth type folk, almost all of them with seemingly nothing else to do but be blind drunk in this dive bar, a constant hair’s breadth away from getting into a massive bar fight.

It’s real America shit, people.

Unfortunately, this little tchotchkes and tetanus heaven with its gastroenteritis-soaked shoreline is being menaced by a multi-racial biker gang on bikes that are not just from America, but from other countries too, which as everyone knows is not only the worst kind of biker gang to run into, but also a kind of MC that totally exists. But in perhaps the most realistic part of the film, these biker bad guys work for the actual worst kind of villain in America… an entitled white male asshole with money and a hard-on for hurting others. So, it’s nice to see him get beat up eventually.

And the man who delivers that beating is Elwood P. Dalton

Elwood P. Dalton hurts people for money. He doesn’t enjoy it, but it’s all he can do. Most people call him Dalton. Dalton’s sad. He’s so sad he’s living on the fringes of society, fighting for money, taking risks, getting hurt on purpose. Dalton’s got a death wish, y’see. He’s living low. Real low. No physical pain can match the mental hell that he lives in, people. He’s brooding and sad and oh so noble, haunted by his memories of his days in the ring. For once upon a time, Dalton was a gladiator in America’s most favorite blood sport, the UFC, but that was long ago, before a friend died in a fight, and it was at Dalton’s hands. That’s a heavy burden for a man to carry, even one as tough as Dalton, so now he’s a sad drifter, a modern day samurai without a master, a ronin on the road, a cowboy whose steal horse is a bus… he’s living by his fists.

But it ain’t much of a life. With no where else to turn to, Dalton takes a job to help clean up The Road House. There, he finds himself living the dream, doing chin-ups on a leaky old house boat moored in a marina full of half sunken boats and fully sunken boats, all while working the door in a shitty bar, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, wasting away again in Margaritaville.

There, but for the grace of god, amirite?

Dalton is a man with regrets, and a bad reputation as a result, so this is his penance. Maybe he can find redemption there? Maybe he can heal? Still, he has to be careful, y’see, because his hands are registered as lethal weapons. That means, if he get into a fight, and he accidentally kills someone? He’ll go to jail. Of course, that’s true of anyone, honestly. If anyone accidentally kills someone in a fight, they go to jail.

Speaking of which, after awhile, Dalton’s shot at peace is eventually shattered. The local bad guys have been getting really frustrated because Dalton just keeps beating them up every time they’re out on the town, just trying to enjoy themselves while being jerks in public, so, well… they end up pushing Dalton a little too far, and after that, it’s… (Echo and the Bunnymen voice) the killing time…

This new version of Roadhouse feels both a little too slow to get started, but then weirdly escalates really quickly all the sudden. The cast is great, but the pacing is weird. For instance, I did like the bit of Crocodile justice, which the film does so much set up for that it’s obvious what’s going to happen at some point, but then it does, sooner than you’d think, and after that, they basically never mention it again. It’s just a Florida gimmick they were really excited to use early on in the film, I guess?

Also, while I know that I definitely watched the whole thing, I still ended up feeling like I looked away at some point and I missed a part and when I looked back, it was suddenly in the middle of the violence for the whole climatic third act, but…

I guess it doesn’t really matter.

So… is the new Roadhouse good? No, not at all. Okay, fine, but is it bad? Yes, definitely, very much so. But does that really matter? I mean, no, I guess not. If we’re being honest here, did you really expect this film to be anything else? Ask yourself, do you really even care? Why would you watch this film, if not just to see some punching, and maybe a boob or two? What else could it possibly be offering?

Sadly, there’s no boobs to see here, this is America after all, we may love our violence, but we are ashamed of both our bodies and our sexuality. But on the plus side, as my wife casually remarked while watching, “It’s got to hurt to get punched that much.”

So, you can rest assured that there’s definitely some punching to enjoy.