Road House
Jake Gyllenhaal rolls with the punches and the terrible CGI in this innocuous but unnecessary remake
Conor McGregor and Jake Gyllenhaal square off in Doug Liman's Road House.
Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) grew up in the school of hard knocks. A former UFC fighter with a notorious reputation, Dalton currently eeks out a living terrifying amateur fighters in grimy illegal bare-knuckle boxing rings. It’s not the most glamorous life, but it’s the one he thinks he deserves.
When Frankie (Jessica Williams) finds Dalton, he’s got a knife sticking out of his gut. Frankie reasons if that didn’t phase him he’s probably the perfect man to run security at her Road House.
She’s right.
Though Dalton is somewhat unorthodox for a bouncer, he’s extremely effective. But the issues at Frankie’s establishment aren’t random skirmishes — someone’s plotting against her. And when they bring out a hired psychopath (Conor McGregor), Dalton will be in for the fight of his life.
Remake/reboot culture is still a great way for studios to draw in quick cash preying on the nostalgia of its viewers. And while the original ‘89 Road House is a camp classic in its own right (who doesn’t love prime Sam Elliott?), I’m not sure that it’s a film in dire need of modernization.
And director Doug Liman has done very little to update the film for a modern audience. Gone is the feathered hair of the 80s, and in its place is some of the most distracting CGI this side of a Sharknado movie. Liman does try to update the setting and flesh out the story (by adding the plot from The Quiet Man, for some reason), but the beauty of the ’89 film was its simplicity. Handsome men fight good — that’s it, that’s the movie.
By trying to “elevate” the material, Liman loses some of the campy B-movie charm. And though Gyllenhaal is a game lead with an offbeat delivery that makes Dalton charming, the film as a whole is sort of a random collection of events and cameos culminating in a fight that is downright silly. That’s a shame because Gyllenhaal clearly worked very hard on those abs and stage-fighting skills just to be upstaged by poorly rendered fire and blood.
Still, the real problem with Road House is stuntcasting the main antagonist. McGregor might be a formidable presence in the ring/octagon, but he’s goofy when on camera. He delivers each line with a manic smile that makes him look like a second grader who’s forgotten their lines in a school play. Every line out of his mouth has a bizarre inflection as if he’s never held a human interaction before. He is also aggressively naked, which starts off as a running joke, but becomes boring just as quickly as McGregor himself does.
While there’s nothing truly offensive about the remake of Road House, there’s also nothing particularly interesting. There are a few references to the old film, but not enough to really trade on the nostalgia it’s hoping it stokes in viewers (seriously, Liman couldn’t even get Sam Elliott for a 10-second cameo?). If you like Jake Gyllenhaal’s abs or bombastic CGI fight sequences, this might be worth viewing. Otherwise, it’s just another in a long line of mediocre remakes.
Verdict: Watch it while folding laundry.
Road House is rated R and available on Prime.
