The 'Road House' Remake Gets It Right
Don't let the streaming-only release fool you; the 'Road House' remake is a worthy successor to the cult classic original.
We’ve got another streaming-only release victim on our hands. The recently released Road House remake deserved a theatrical release - and, apparently, the people behind this thought so too, judging by the behind-the-scenes animosity that followed this production and its eventual “distribution.” Nevertheless, Road House deserves your attention, even if it was relegated to Amazon Prime. This movie rocks.
Just like the 1989 original starring Patrick Swayze, 2024’s Road House is a brawling good time. It absolutely understands what it is and what it’s supposed to do. And it does those things well.
The film is of course based on a ridiculous premise. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Elwood Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter who comes to the Florida Keys to be a bouncer for a bar being terrorized by a gang of thugs, controlled by Billy Magnussen’s Ben Brandt, a shady real estate developer looking to tear down the Road House in favor of a new resort. Endless fights and murders without consequences abound, all set to a killer soundtrack.
Clearly everyone here is a devotee of the original, knowing full well what made it a cult classic in the first place. Gyllenhaal seems to be having a great time as Dalton, and we’re treated to a memorable cast of secondary characters, highlighted by real-life psycho Conor McGregor playing just an absolutely crazed hit man. Whatever your tolerance for his performance might end up being, the fact is we just don’t get memorably insane villains like this anymore.
The fact that a hit man gets involved in this plot at all, culminating in a giant sea-to-shore rumble that nearly takes down the entire bar just makes the whole thing that much better. This is no-holds barred goofiness, wrapped up in brutal fight choreography that is, honestly, enhanced in most cases by the much-talked-about CGI tweaking.
Also, I’m just a sucker for a cool closing credits sequence, and this one is as good as it gets, punctuated by a great new Post Malone song that I’m going to need him to release as soon as possible so I don’t have to keep bumping the YouTube rips of it.
Road House rules.