Road House (2024)
3 / 5
80s Nostalgia Cinema is getting way deep into the barrel now. If it’s going to be like this, can we please get a Goonies reunion? (seriously, Ke Huy Quan just won an Oscar–if we’re going to keep surfing this wave, can we at least get more booty traps?) Anyway, since this was probably inevitable it’s a relief that at least Joel Silver went ahead and did it before somebody tried to buy him out or something. In fact, I’m willing to believe that Silver’s involvement was the key that kept this watchable at all. And it is watchable, though definitely a lesser film in comparison to its predecessor.
There are two pieces Silver had to preserve to make this movie work. The first is obvious: Dalton. The original Road House is an indelible thread in the 80s pop culture tapestry, based largely on Patrick Swayze’s total commitment to the role of Dalton. So the biggest question (maybe the only question) this movie has to answer is simple: does Jake Gyllenhaal measure up? Kinda, yeah, almost. Swayze was a guy looking to break out of a niche and be a big-time heroic star. Frankly, so is Gyllenhaal, though Swayze’s niche was romantic heartthrob and Gyllenhaal’s is … weird loner. Swayze used the role to shift his dancer’s athleticism into predatory physicality that protected a wounded soul. Gyllenhaal (breathtakingly ripped here, btw) turns his quirky-buddy line delivery into something that sounds like a guy who’s trying to keep everything and everyone at arm’s length, again masking that wounded soul (and he’s still a weird loner, so … ).
That has to happen against the other critical piece of the puzzle: the club and the town. This is a place I give Silver a lot of credit; in the hands of someone who wasn’t steeped in the tone and attitude of the first film, this could have turned into an insufferable deconstructed disaster of subverted tropes. That doesn’t happen here. This is a goofy film, but it’s not like the original wasn’t. It deviates from the original in a variety of ways, but it does so to establish itself as separate, not reject the old simply because it’s old. The midwest outlaw country of the first film gives way to delta zydeco (still awesome, just different), and the old dude in the auto parts store is now a father and daughter running a bookshop (less awesome, but not a problem). The plot is still thin, but the villain’s plan makes more sense. Dalton’s past trauma, described in oblique asides in the first film, gets a lot of attention here in the remake (undoubtedly to work in some UFC product placement and score dudebro points) which feels unnecessary and suggests a lack of faith in the modern audience. Sam Elliott is missing, and the absence of a mentor for Dalton is palpable. At the end of the day, though, In spite of all the little shifts trying to make this an “update,” it still comes off as more of an homage.
3 stars of 5: Worth watching in double-feature with the first one, just to see, but not something that’s ever going to match its predecessor.