Remaking any film is hard work, but imagine the pressure of remaking a classic! But neither have anything on remaking a cult classic; the filmmakers struck the elusive cinematic lightning-in-a-bottle, and you dare try and recapture it?
Amazon MGM Studios' "Road House," which debuts on Amazon Prime, bills itself as a reimagining of the 1989 original. I've never seen the original, but I do know there's monster trucks in it. And I'm sad to report, this new one does not, and suffers thusly.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dalton, the Patrick Swazye's character here, a homeless former UFC champ, disillusioned as he makes money by entering underground fights, then wins by not fighting. Why? Because the other fighters recognize him and back out. We see this as the film opens with a cheap Post Malone cameo, bowing out and losing the pot of winnings. This plot-point doesn't make much sense because it A) depends on everyone knowing who this guy is and B) depends on people being so intimidated.
I'm tempted to say Post Malone's flabby, shirtless body makes even less sense as the "underground champ," but that'd be mean of me. Oh whoops, did I write that out loud?
All this changes when Frankie, owner of the "Road House," an, ahem, roadhouse bar, in the Florida Keys, played by Jessica Williams, asks Dalton if he'd like a temp job as her bouncer. He originally says no because of plot, since the next scene finds him sitting in his car on the train tracks, hoping to kill himself.
I know I know, what a good main character.
He snaps back to reality at the last second, only for his car to stall, but for no reason outside of the magic of movie making does he survive, so it's off to the Sunshine State. It's a bad story marred with even worse CGI effects of boats, trains and trucks, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
What kind of unruly customers frequent this Road House? The goons of a crime boss, naturally. They work for Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen), a sort of high-maintenance prima-donna who whines and freaks out about everything, right down to the way he gets his face shaven. In his defense, he's mad that the guy shaving him keeps nicking him, but then again, he's getting a shave on a yacht, so...
Dalton easily takes out the thugs, which highlights two of the best things this version of "Road House" has going for it: the hand-to-hand combat, and Jake Gyllenhaal's performance. Much of the action is very well-staged and cleanly shot, but sometimes director Doug Liman gets in his own way with silly film techniques like the occasional "first person" view between blows. It is cool in theory, but it is disorientating and makes it hard to see what's going on. He also sometimes blurs the scene, I imagine to simulate how the fighters are getting hurt, as in, their view is blurring, but if I wanted to see what it was like as a bar-fighter, I wouldn't just watch movies based on the subject.
But Gyllenhaal is really quite interesting to watch: he has an awkward screen-presence, kind of mousy, like he's uncertain about each situation he finds himself in. It juxtaposes wonderfully against his rippled muscles. He also speaks with a sort of quite, almost bored tone, as if he views how his life's turned out with sadness and disinterest.
I mean, he could easily be bored, like he knows the script is a stinker, and I dunno, maybe I was grasping at straws for positives. At one point a character compares him to Mr. Rogers, only if he was crossed with John Wick. Unfortunately, the idea is better than the execution.
But again, why are the goons always at the bar? Why don't the cops do anything? Why do these men's wounds heal in what seems like a day? Because plot, that's why!
Ben's dad, who's in prison, really runs the show, and has bought all the land neighboring the bar for his dreams of some silly construction project, or something. I know, thrilling. The fights are the highlight here, but much of the two hour+ long runtime gets bogged down with this silly scheme that you just wish they cut all that noise out and make a shorter, tighter film about some bouncer at an inexplicably rowdy bar. It's this narrative nonsense that leads us to the aforementioned janky special effects, which look atrocious on the small-screen that you wonder if they're the reason this isn't on the big-screen; imagine how much worse they'd look there!
Eventually the boss sends in Knox (Conor McGregor) to kill the bouncer, and this really irks Ben. Actually, everyone hates Knox, but I found no solace in sharing that feeling. Knox is too smug and shallow to be anything but annoying, this obnoxious caricature that only resembles a real-life human in the sense he's played by a person in real life. At at least two points he shows his ass cheeks, and I don't think I've ever seen someone be so proud by their onscreen nudity. Har hee har har.
I get that they were going for a villain you "love to hate," but this would be over-the-top in a cartoon. He just over-does it. The interwebs tells me this is his first movie, so maybe he there's a good actor inside the lump of meat, but then again, the interwebs also tells me he's a pretty horrible person in real life too. So you know, maybe it's just really good casting.
He hulks around in a constant state of flex and speaks with a most irritating brogue, spewing angry trash talk almost every single moment he's in. But what bothered me most was his giant grin he always sports, like someone on the crew kept whispering "you're doing such a good job" in his ear. Sorry Conor, they're lying to you.
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