Two Road Hous­es, unalike in dignity

2024 feels too late for a Road House remake – a clear rem­nant of the ​’80s nos­tal­gia boom which dom­i­nat­ed the pre­vi­ous decade, bring­ing us such ​“gems” as Robo­Cop, Red Dawn, and The Thing. Indeed, the notion first man­i­fest­ed in 2015 (with Ron­da Rousey planned to star, anoth­er extreme­ly mid-2010s cul­tur­al sig­ni­fi­er), though that project is unre­lat­ed to the Doug-Liman-direct­ed, Jake-Gyl­len­haal-star­ring pic­ture that has now hit Ama­zon Prime. As Han­nah Strong has expli­cat­ed on this site, it is most­ly a dud, fail­ing like so many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic reimag­in­ings to make a case for its exis­tence. Its plea­sures are fleet­ing and scat­tered (like how Conor McGre­gor walks like that guy from that one meme), as opposed to the con­sis­tent string of mem­o­rable lines and moments in the original.

The remake rep­re­sents the last unex­plored ​’80s action movie rite of pas­sage for Road House, which has already received an iron­ic Off-Broad­way stage musi­cal adap­ta­tion, a 2000s direct-to-DVD sequel fea­tur­ing none of the orig­i­nal cast or crew, its own Fam­i­ly Guy run­ning gag, and a Vine­gar Syn­drome spe­cial edi­tion. The one box not ticked is the lega­cy-quel, a pos­si­bil­i­ty sad­ly fore­closed by Patrick Swayze’s untime­ly death in 2009. I like to think that oth­er­wise it sure­ly would have hap­pened by now; that Swayze would have returned as Dal­ton to show a new gen­er­a­tion of win­ning­ly mul­ti­eth­nic, multi­gen­der young bounc­ers the ropes. Depend­ing on the tim­ing, it could have tak­en the form of a stream­ing series. What I’m say­ing is that in the uni­verse where­in Swayze lives, MGM+ may be a major plat­form. Such was his power.

The 1989 Road House has an unde­served rep­u­ta­tion for being ​“so bad it’s good” and for decades was one of the most pop­u­lar tar­gets for a cult audi­ence of bor­ing peo­ple who go through over­ly elab­o­rate insin­cere rit­u­als of claim­ing to only watch cer­tain movies to make fun of them. This image formed not long after the film was released when it was nom­i­nat­ed for five Gold­en Rasp­ber­ry Awards. I first learned of it from a web­site I fre­quent­ed in my teens that spe­cial­ized in writ­ten ​“humor­ous” recaps of ​“bad” movies. (I must admit that, despite noth­ing of val­ue being lost, I had a pang of nos­tal­gic loss when while writ­ing this arti­cle I looked up The Agony Booth for the first time in years and learned the site is now defunct.)

The ​“so bad it’s good” label is often slapped on any film that’s suf­fi­cient­ly off-kil­ter as to desta­bi­lize the view­er, and Road House is unde­ni­ably full of such dis­tinc­tive moments: Dal­ton casu­al­ly walk­ing around nude in front of a co-work­er, the absurd amount of vio­lence and intrigue with­in a tiny Mis­souri town, and the many quotably over-the-top lines, includ­ing ​“I heard you had balls big enough to come in a dump truck”, ​“I used to fuck guys like you in prison!” and, of course, ​“Pain don’t hurt.”

The truth is that Road House rep­re­sents an incred­i­ble pool­ing of America’s action cin­e­ma tal­ent work­ing at the height of their pow­ers. There’s pro­duc­er Joel Sil­ver, direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Dean Cundey, edi­tors John Link and Frank Urioste, stunt train­ers and coor­di­na­tors Ben­ny Urquidez and Charles Picerni to name just a few of the folks bring­ing in count­less hours of col­lec­tive ass-kick­ing author­i­ty. It is in many ways a last hur­rah for the ​’80s action film, with all the decade’s love of low-sub­text machis­mo dis­tilled into the kind of sin­cere mix of Hawk­sian hang­out and fine­ly chore­o­graphed bru­tal­i­ty that could have only been shep­herd­ed so sin­cere­ly by a man named Row­dy Herrington.

Swayze and Gyllenhaal’s respec­tive takes on cool­er king Dal­ton are the most emblem­at­ic divi­sion between the two films. Road House is one of the best show­cas­es for Swayze’s effort­less swag­ger – in con­trast to most ​’80s action heroes, he wasn’t roid­ed-out or overt­ly macho, but lithe and cat­like, patient in his cool­ness. (The per­fec­tion of this per­sona would come two years lat­er with his por­tray­al of surfer bro crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind Bod­hi in Kathryn Bigelow’s mas­ter­piece Point Break, also remade with dis­ap­point­ing results.) Dal­ton can hob­ble mul­ti­ple men at once with­out break­ing a sweat, but he also embod­ies his mantra to ​“Be nice.” The reveal that he was an NYU phi­los­o­phy major is a tremen­dous gag, but Swayze authen­ti­cal­ly holds him­self as if he is in con­stant med­i­ta­tion – liv­ing the mind­ful lifestyle decades before the term was popular.

Gyl­len­haal is try­ing some­thing sim­i­lar, with his Dal­ton doing his best to defuse tense sit­u­a­tions and offer foes the easy way out. The best part of the new Road House is when, after beat­ing the shit out of a bik­er gang, he then dri­ves them all to the hos­pi­tal. But his smile nev­er reach­es his eyes – this Dal­ton isn’t a zen mas­ter, he’s just bare­ly con­tain­ing his rage. Gyllenhaal’s nat­ur­al demeanor is more than a lit­tle man­ic; his mus­cles are all taut as piano strings, and the cor­ner of his eye seems to con­stant­ly twitch. His best roles, like the psy­chot­i­cal­ly ambi­tious news­man Lou Bloom of Night­crawler, take advan­tage of this. As Dal­ton, it means that not even he seems to buy his own nice-guy act. His inter­ac­tions with locals and espe­cial­ly his ver­sion of the cen­tral romance lack any conviction.

That dis­tinc­tion illu­mi­nates the main dif­fer­ence between the Road Hous­es. The orig­i­nal is about medi­at­ing anger and hav­ing the restraint to deploy vio­lence only when need­ed. When we learn that Swayze’s Dal­ton killed a man once, it’s gen­uine­ly sur­pris­ing and recon­tex­tu­al­izes both his prac­ticed dis­ci­pline and the aggres­sion that his esca­lat­ing con­flict with Ben Gazzara’s local crime lord Wes­ley draws out of him. There’s actu­al grav­i­tas and cathar­sis when he reach­es his break­ing point. The reveal of Gyl­len­haal killing a man in the octa­gon (in the remake Dal­ton is a for­mer UFC fight­er, in anoth­er exam­ple of the film favor­ing expect­ed lore where the orig­i­nal throws curve­balls) would not shock even if the plot didn’t bla­tant­ly tele­graph it. It’s just sur­pris­ing he hasn’t killed more people.

It didn’t have to be this way. It could have even worked out that, despite Liman’s best efforts, the remake went straight to stream­ing. In a way, that’d make for a fit­ting par­al­lel, for the fact that the orig­i­nal is such a clas­sic of basic cable that one could believe it sim­ply man­i­fest­ed one day on AMC. But the new Road House has none of the lived-in grit of the orig­i­nal, exem­pli­fied by how clean the alleged shit­hole tit­u­lar road­house is. Anoth­er almost too obvi­ous sign­post: the road­house is now just called ​“the Road House,” where­as in the orig­i­nal it was the Dou­ble Deuce. There are nat­u­ral­ly jokes about this, but such lamp­shade-hang­ing can’t absolve the remake’s skit­tish­ness toward any speci­fici­ty. How can it then pos­si­bly hope to live up to a film that peo­ple still glee­ful­ly quote and end­less­ly rewatch today?