Road House is the remake of the classic film from the 80s directed by Rowdy Herrington and starring Patrick Swayze as John Dalton, a bouncer who has a specific set of skills. The supporting cast starred Sam Elliot as Dalton’s friend. Kelly Lynch is his love interest and Ben Gazara is the foil of the film. The remake is much different from the original in a lot of ways and not nearly as good either.

This time around Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an ex-ufc fighter who takes a job reluctantly as a bouncer at a Florida Keys Road House. He thinks it’s going to be an easy time to sit back and relax in the sun, but he finds out otherwise. There is a man (Billy Magnusson) who is trying to drive the owner out so he can build a resort hotel on the ground that the bar sits on. Dalton does what he does best and fights to help the owner and her employees. 

Doug Liman keeps the basic premise of the classic film Road House in this version. He just modernized it to fit a different aesthetic. The setting of the Florida Keys is the main change and the backstory of the main character. These are the two main changes from the original film. Changing the race and sex, Jessica Williams plays the character now and Kevin Tighe played this character in the original film, of the owner of the bar is a minor change but one that makes sense in this day and age.

The original film had cameos from Terry Funk, a thug, and Jeff Healey, the band leader, so it makes sense this film would also have some guest appearances from some notable celebrities.  The main one is Conor McGregor who shows up about halfway through the movie as a hired thug for Radmusson’s character to do his dirty work. McGregor is way over the top as this character and has some terrible line readings. Anybody could have done this character better than he did. In the beginning, there was an underground fight sequence and the main fighter was played by Post Malone, a popular rapper of today. Beau Knapp, a good actor who’s had decent roles in the past was wasted as a thug working for Rasmusson’s character as well. A little girl played by Hannah Love-Lanier was a bright spot in the film.

I felt an honest kingship with Swayze’s Dalton from the original Road House. I genuinely cared about the bar he was working at in that film. As a pet peeve of mine, I do live in Florida and I am sick of all the building and tearing down of forests and building on beaches but the way it was handled in this film didn’t work for me. The script was a bit haphazardly written just to get this movie out quickly. The end product suffered because of that. I wish there was someone who could have come in and given this story a once over to show more care for the supporting cast and their stories. The main story was a bit of a mess for me as well.

Instead of a lot of hand-to-hand combat like the first film relied on, this one falls back on the backdrop of the ocean to do a lot of boat racing and stunts. This looked a little bit wonky to me. The visuals looked off for some reason. When there was hand-to-hand combat it was done in a way that looked fake. Given you have a great hand-to-hand combat expert in the film you would think this part of the movie would look better but it looks cartoonist. The fight scenes and action sequences were terrible, to say the least.

The biggest disappointment in this movie is Jake Gyllenhaal.  He has done a lot of great work in his career from Nightcrawler to Spiderman: Far From Home where he played Mysterio. He was given a solid role and he squandered it. It was like he phoned in all of his lines.  Moreover, he was asleep at the wheel. That to me is unacceptable. Even if the script is bad you try to make the most of it. This is the worst he has been in a long time. Maybe he just didn’t care because of the material, who knows? I feel bad because I was looking forward to him in this role. He was such a letdown as Dalton nowhere close to what Patrick Swayze did with the character. 

Road House was a cheap knockoff of the original.  The story was a rip-off of the original with a Florida-themed plot switched in place of the original story. The acting was fine but McGregor was terrible in his role. He is a terrible actor and the action scenes he was in weren’t much better. The visual effects didn’t look very good and neither did the fight sequences.  This just seemed like a cheap ripoff of the 80s classic. You know what they say though, you always have the original to look back on if the remake or reboot is bad. In this case it is.

Rod House is streaming on Prime Video March 21st

2 Stars

Dan Skip Allen