The Road House remake is not a high art but it succeeds at being the kind of wild action project that we all could use.
Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter trying to escape his dark past and his penchant for violence, is barely scraping by on the reputation that still precedes him and gets sucked into a crowd-pleasing maelstrom of small-town mayhem. With the soul of a poet as well as a reputed ability to rip a man’s throat out with his bare hands, he is ready to clean up a certain establishment’s act as a bouncer.
The film is directed by Doug Liman and the cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, Joaquin de Almeida, Austin Post, and Conor McGregor.
As we have seen from his earlier films, the best of which include The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow, Doug Liman is a more-than-capable director of action. The bar brawls are well choreographed and cleanly shot, and the fighting encompasses everything from intimate fisticuffs to grander-scale set pieces. The action-acclaimed film director creates a more exciting and eventful journey by putting together an attractive cast that seems to be enjoying themselves, which does improve the watchability.
The action in Road House is brutal, at moments, it’s vicious. Liman stages the pulp for maximum realism; he wants you to believe what you’re seeing. Liman simply knows how to structure a film with fluid ingenuity.
The action scenes especially those with hand-to-hand combat are rapidly paced, containing some brutal shots, but ultimately wonky in their execution. They were reminiscent of the excellent editing shown by Doc Crotzer. It’s an action film that doubles down on the action.
The film’s screenplay was written by Anthony Bagorozzi and Charles Mondry.
They give the viewer those hilarious one liners, with a witty and snappy dialogue. The characters are well developed and relatable, with each one bringing their own unique brand of humor to the film.
The film’s music score is composed by the Canadian television and film score composer Christophe Beck, who previously collaborated with Doug Liman on American Made and Edge of Tomorrow. Post Malone also performs a song titled “Horsepower”, as he also makes an appearance in the film.
One of the film’s major setbacks is that once you squint past the Gyllenhaal of it all, there’s not much on offer here. The leading character tears through a thin sketch of a story, populated by characters, performances and even some action scenes that feel like placeholders. There’s something sketchy in the film that creates an off-putting disconnect between the film’s action aesthetic and its content.
Road House is a remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze cheeseball action cult film, and it’s staged with a verve and wit and dynamic grittiness that make the original film look rickety.
It’s the bar fights, cheesy jokes, unrealistic situations, and action scenes with a strong degree of unseriousness to them that make the 2024 Road House film remarkable and enjoyable to watch.
Road House is streaming now on Prime Video.
