Jake Gyllenhaal’s ‘Road House’ remake is a lackluster attempt at recapturing the cult classic
The hand-to-hand action in that movie is so tactile that you have to imagine the stuntmen were going home bruised.
Road House is a by-the-numbers action flick that pales in comparison to its source material.
A remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze cult classic of the same name, Road House refreshes some material but is basically the same movie, except with an added veneer of quality.
That ‘quality’ is meant to come in the form of Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role, backed up by Amazon’s endless funds for large-scale action set pieces.
But Gyllenhaal’s laid-back, simmering psychopath take on the ‘Dalton’ role feels oddly grating in a movie so openly trying to be stupid fun.
There is no doubt he looks the part and I believed him as an ex-MMA fighter, but he basically whispers through the first three quarters of this movie and shouts through the last.
Even famed real-life fighter Conor McGregor, who is very wooden in his big screen debut as a henchman, is at least aware of the type of movie he is in.
But let us forget performances for a moment, because viewers are probably turning on this movie for brawn rather than nuance.
The fighting is pretty good when we actually see people swinging at each other, but there is an over-reliance on CGI cuts between the punches that makes it feel unreal.
A large-scale bar fight at one point has plenty of solid action but the way the camera weaves through the melee makes it seem like a video game.
At no point did I feel like there were actually punches being landed in the vein of the original 1989 version.
The hand-to-hand action in that movie is so tactile that you have to imagine the stuntmen were going home bruised.
This is a post-John Wick world after all, so if you are going to make a fight movie without guns it has to be expertly crafted or it will just look second rate.
If you are in the mood for a Road House type movie, rather rewatch the original for its schlocky but well crafted fun that earned it cult classic status.
Road House (2024) is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Rated 18 for heavy violence and language.
2/5.
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