Wow, studios must be getting desperate. With the superhero calamity of 2023 and so far 2024, studios are desperate to call back any IP from any age, to see if they can find a lurking hit somewhere. Even the die hards I know who love Patrick Swayze’s Road House weren’t exactly clamoring for a new one. And 2024’s remake confirms a lot of their fears I imagine. Thankfully, this film is just gonna end up in streaming hell, subject to the algorithm and going away pretty quickly.
The updated story of this Road House. Elwood Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal), now with a first name, was a great UFC fighter who flamed out spectacularly, so much so that people are scared to even fight him. That’s perfect for Frankie (Jessica Williams), a bar owner of a road house in the Florida Keys that’s drawn the hooligans of local rich boy kingpin Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen). Frankie hires Dalton to clean up her place, but as we’ve seen, in small towns, if you punch at the powerful, they usually punch back, sometimes harder, like from Knox, who suspiciously looks like Conor McGregor.
This road house suffers most from self awareness and studio polish. The 1989 one’s complete belief in it’s stupid premise, with no one winking at the camera at all, gives the movie an honest charm that made it the action classic it is today. This new one is more in line with the times, with multiple characters commenting on the situation they are in, calling out the stupidity while they are participating in it. This makes all unintentional comedy intentional, and thus makes any fun here too deliberate to fully enjoy. That brings us to the action. Setting it in the Florida Keys is the right choice: that place is the Wild West of today. But come on, Doug Liman, embrace the sweaty stickiness of your setting! This movie should be dirty and grimy, with everyone down here happily enjoying their little dive on the water. Instead, we’re in a beautiful beachfront bar with glass roofing and most boats just generically good looking and devoid of personality. Liman’s professionalism inadvertently sucks the life out of Road House, making it a pointless cash grab going for nostalgia alone, completely missing what makes the Swayze movie so enjoyable.
Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t super helping here either. He got fit enough to look ok fighting Conor McGregor (which he mostly does, impressive enough), but that’s at the expense of Dalton’s character, which he plays mostly down the middle as a subdued wise cracking action type. The movie teases a more psycho Dalton which Gyllenhaal could really have done something with, but instead he plays the leading man with the Oscary physical transformation. Conor McGregor was the wild card…and basically stays that way. He’s not really acting here, just spitting a bunch of physical and lyrical Irish jabs in anyone’s direction. At least Arturo Castro and Billy Magnussen find the best tone occasionally, helping whatever shimmer the movie has glow brightest when they’re onscreen. When Conor McGregor’s in the D-Movie version of Road House, Gyllenhaal’s in the A one, and Castro and Magnussen are in the B Movie, your movie report card is too confusing for the audience to be proud of what they’re seeing, sorry boys.
Congratulations Patrick Swayze. Your philosophy loving cooler still holds the top spot among best movie bouncers. And even though Jake Gyllenhaal’s Dalton would kick your ass, you would have purpose and direction, which he has neither. Though I hope Swayze’s Dalton is in his heaven, bouncing in the Keys, a beautiful place to chill and rest easy.