Road House: Not So Swayze

In this adrenaline-fueled reimagining of the 80s cult classic, ex-UFC fighter Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.

REVIEW;

The new Road House only outdoes the Patrick Swayze original in violence. The bone crunching Jake Gyllenhaal inflicts on his miscreants is staged with wit, verve and a visual grittiness that can only be called ultraviolence. Doug Liman the director loves slumming on the the threshold of irresponsibility, to give in to his nastiest grind-house impulses. Liman made me feel this id pain.

The action is ultraviolence because it’s beyond brutal. Road House can’t exist without this viciousness. It’s its own redemption and love. You can’t relax in to this kind of trash. It must engulf you. It wants to out wick John Wick in hipster style.

Liman in Road House approaches the sadism and revenge, the entire debased spectacle with a humanist eye. The baddies get what’s coming to them. Liman lets us revel in their comeuppance. Yet it’s never easy. And it’s all delivered with a bevy of bar bands doing their thing in the background. Music and violence are a critical part of its entertainment quotient.

Dalton was a former UFC fighter, a feared one whose reputation sticks out whenever he removes his hoodie and his opponent realize what shit they’ve gotten themselves into. Dalton is a pensive and considered badass with abs to match. He’ll kick you silly and then drive you to the hospital. He’s sincere yet sarcastic. He’s a sweetheart with torment bubbling beneath, waiting for the right cause to unleash his rage.

Frankie (Jessica Williams) is the owner of the road house — which is now, incidentally, named the Road House. It’s a sprawling getaway on the beach with a grass roof and open walls, like a giant tiki bar. Why does it need to be cleaned up? Because Brandt, played by Billy Magnussen as a baby-faced weasel, wants to eliminate the place so that he can build a high-end resort.

The plot is simplicity itself, but each of the villains has his own maniacal flavor. Brandt, scoundrel that he is, actually believes that he’s a virtuous architect of the community; that’s his evil folly. And once Dalton puts Dell (JD Pardo), ringleader of the local motorcycle gang, out of business with the help of the crocodile who lives under the houseboat he’s crashing in, Brandt’s powerful father calls in a brute-force fixer: Knox, played by the Irish mixed-martial-arts fighter Conor McGregor in a stunning movie debut. Thick-bearded and bulky-chested, with gleaming white teeth, he makes Knox move around like a gorilla on pep pills,

This is an adversary worthy of Dalton — his equal, except for the fact that he’s on the side of wrong. But as the film builds toward their ultimate showdown, getting very vehicular in the process (Liman turns the crashing confrontations of trucks and boats into a kind of nihilistic action ballet), you feel the low-down momentousness. This is not a war that’s going to be won by punching. Only stabbing — a great deal of it — will do.

Part of Road House scuzzy pleasure is that it has no pretense about itself. Liman turns the fight scenes into rollicking spontaneous smashfests. Daniela Melchior, who takes the Kelly Lynch role (the local physician who falls for Dalton), amps up the tough-nut romanticism. But Road House is Gyllenhaal’s movie. He has found the perfect vehicle for screen warmth, and ethereal decency