‘People seem a little aggressive around here,’ notes Jake Gyllenhaal’s taciturn but twinkly-eyed bouncer, Elwood Dalton, of the good people in Florida’s Glass Key. Once a UFC champion, now haunted by guilt and spiritually at odds with his own violent skillset, Dalton is also a master of understatement. The punters at the sunny Florida establishment he’s been hired to manage can’t make it through so much as a quiet beer without smashing each other’s faces in.
Even more than the Patrick Swayze cult classic on which Doug Liman’s fun and ferocious update loyally riffs, this Road House is a snarling beast of a thing, full of snapped limbs and faces like hamburger patties. The fight scenes, choreographed by Logan stunt man Garrett Warren, are spectacularly violent. I could swear someone yelped at one point in my screening. It could well have been me.
This roadhouse is a thatched, open-plan joint in which a conveyor belt of house bands play behind chicken wire (presumably no one books this place more than once). It makes the Mos Eisley cantina look like a soft play centre. There’s a hospital 20 minutes down the road, Dalton helpfully informs a group of troublemaking biker meatheads, before pulverising them and driving them there.
The cartoonish Conor McGregor is the bad kind of stunt casting
The first half is full of similarly knowing touches. Then Conor McGregor strides into the movie, serving both as Dalton’s brawny nemesis and testosterone-fuelled comic relief, and subtlety becomes the latest thing to go out the window. The UFC legend plays a bruiser hired by Billy Magnussen’s slimy property developer to shut Dalton, and the bar, down. Unfortunately, it’s the bad kind of stunt casting, where McGregor’s look-at-me cartoonishness quickly grates and overshadows the restrained Gyllenhaal.
The ghosts of Dalton’s past stalk him – and the movie – in predictable ways (dream sequences, brooding looks, etc), without finding much depth or resolution. Road House flirts with exploring the dark side of male aggression before screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry decide that it’s far more fun just to let rip instead.
In fairness, they’re probably not wrong. The combination of Gyllenhaal’s easy charm, some Florida sunshine and at least one fight scene for the ages make this Road House worth stopping by. Just try to grab a seat in a quiet corner.
Streaming on Prime Video from Mar 21.