Road House (2024)

I wasn't sure if I was going to cover this one, especially considering when I started the site how I was ardently opposed to reviewing the Road House sequel, but when I saw some of the other sites and pods covering it, I figured we should do it as well, so I had Will from Exploding Helicopter on the pod to talk both this and the original. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this, both on the site and podcast; and the DTV Digest covered this on their pod.

Road House has Jake Gyllenhaal as Dalton, a disgraced MMA fighter living out of his car and engaging in cage fights. After one fight that ends up not happening against Post Malone, Jessica Williams, owner of a bar down in the Florida Keys, asks if Gyllenhaal can come down there to run security for her bar. When he arrives, he discovers all isn't what it seems, as a crime boss who could pass as a Crypto Bro (Billy Mangussen) seems to be causing all the issues, and when Gyllenhaal thwarts his plans, the Crypto Bro's dad calls in an aggressively nude Conor McGregor. Will our hero stick it out and save the day?

As we discussed on the podcast episode, there are elements that made the first one work that this one lacks. Like a supporting cast we care about who develop as the film goes on. Chemistry between the hero and the leading lady. A plot that, as silly as it might be, is consistent for the most part and works in the world it exists in. This doesn't have any of that. None of the supporting characters develop in any kind of way. One of the best scenes in the original was when Kathleen Wilhoite performs "Knock On Wood" with Jeff Healey and his band, showing how she was growing as the bar grew. We have nothing like that here, as instead of one house band throughout, we're treated to a series of Hipster jam bands, each as unmemorable as the one before it. I also didn't think Gyllenhaal had great chemistry with Daniela Melchior, which might have happened in the original if they'd gone with Annette Benning, but they didn't, and Kelly Lynch was great with Patrick Swayze. So with no chemistry, why do I care that they're hooking up. Then there was the uneven plot. Early on they make a big deal about the crocodile in the water, and he eats one baddie, and then that's it. Don't the filmmakers know the rule on Chekhov's Crocodile? Finally, we had a lot of CGI, which I could forgive, but it looked off, which made the scenes hard to watch in spots. The thing is, at 90 minutes this would've overcome all of those shortcomings and could've been a fun Saturday night pizza and beer film; but at that two-hour runtime, I'd rather just watch the original.

All that said, I thought Jake Gyllenhaal was great. If any performance made the film it as his. When I first started the site, I never would've expected I'd be doing a Gyllenhaal film, but such is the world we live in now where even the biggest names go straight to streaming. The thing is, beyond Gyllenhaal, this felt like a straight-to-streamer, so we had this big movie star and top-tier actor with no one else at that level starring with him. I think if you have someone at a Gyllenhaal level, you need at least one other star in the cast that, when you click on their IMDb bio, there's an "All About" or "Career Retrospective" video; and then maybe someone who's a notch below that, and then you can get into the other names we recognize here. Like Guy Ritchie's the Covenant, which is the film Gyllenhaal did before this, you have Emily Beecham and Jonny Lee Miller. I think Daniela Melchior and Jessica Williams, as good as they are, don't quite cut it, so I was left with a feeling of everyone just being excited to work with Gyllenhaal seeping into every scene. I thought we may never see him again, as he's now the star of the current number one prestige TV show, Presumed Innocent, but it looks like he has another Amazon project in development, possibly a sequel to this.

One of my complaints was the lack of chemistry between Gyllenhaal and Melchior. Where there was some chemistry was between Gyllenhaal and BK Cannon, who plays the Kathleen Wilhoite role. Again, that character wasn't developed like she was in the original, which was too bad, because Cannon turned in one of the better performances. That's the thing though, this movie wasn't going to make any unsafe choices--hell, they were afraid to make Dalton a famous bouncer, they had to go with the safer choice of making him an MMA fighter. And maybe that's indicative of how I felt about the movie overall, it was too safe. For all the danger in the plot, the cliched nature of everything meant that I knew where everything was going before it went there--no chances being taken. Had they started with BK Cannon as the love interest, I imagine the whole thing would've been a series of zags from there.

I refused to believe that people are dumber nowadays, but maybe the people making movies think they are? The original Road House was a modern take on the Western, and we had characters with names from famous Westerns, but the movie didn't overtly tell us over and over "this is supposed to be like a Western!" We got it, right? And if we didn't, that was our problem. In this new one, there's a father and daughter who own a bookstore, and the daughter constantly tells Gyllenhaal he's like the hero in a Western. It defeats the purpose of making your film a modern version of the Western if you tell us every ten minutes! I'm sorry I'm yelling, I was just frustrated. 

Finally, I saved my number one complaint for this seventh paragraph. The whole point of the original Road House is that it's about a famous bouncer! And that the world the film takes place in has other famous bouncers! Anything else, you just have an action movie. What makes Road House Road House isn't a bar called "Road House" or a hero named "Dalton" who takes a job as a bouncer, he needs to already be a bouncer, and a famous one at that. Why would you change the most important part of the movie? It's like remaking The Maltese Falcon and making Sam Spade a boxer instead of a detective. Why would you do that? Because you don't respect the source material, you think you're better than it, and it turns out you're not, you're worse.

And with that, I'll wrap this up. This is included with Prime, so if you're already paying for two-day shipping, you can watch this too. If it was shorter it could've overcome its shortcomings, but this isn't the classic the original is, and it wasn't going to be based on the concept they went with--I guess it's the old adage, if you're going to fail, fail fast, and 90 minutes would've meant they were failing faster. Still, it's Jake Gyllenhaal straight-to-streaming, so we get to review it, which is a silver lining. And for the podcast episode Will and I did, it's number 160 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3359350

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.