Road House

Jake Gyllenhaal inhabits the ghost of Patrick Swayze in a gruesomely engaging action-drama.

Ripped to go: Jake Gyllenhaal

A roadhouse is usually described as a bar or nightclub situated on a road beyond the jurisdiction of the local town. It’s also the name of a formulaic, mindless and very violent Patrick Swayze movie released in 1989, set at a club called the Double Deuce in Jasper, Missouri. This remake, from none other than Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow), follows the basic outline of the earlier movie but gives it a whole new identity. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Elwood Dalton, a former mixed martial artist with a perennial smile stamped on his face. He’s an easy-going, instantly likeable guy, polite and sure of himself. But although he would appear comfortable in his own skin, he still can’t sleep at night.

The opening scene augurs more of what is to come. At a highly unsavoury bare-knuckle fight club, a heavily-tattooed titan is beating the waste matter out of an even bigger man. Then Elwood turns up, his face shadowed by his hoodie, who volunteers to enter the ring. Then he slips off his top to reveal a torso like a low-lying mountain rage, with peaks and troughs in all the right places. This is the body Gyllenhaal sported in Southpaw (2015) and the victor in the ring takes one look at him and throws in the towel.

Elwood’s reputation precedes him and the film is not unlike the jacket he discards in the opening round. For the best part of its first hour, Road House unfolds like a gritty, granular and often very funny slice of guilty pleasure – and Gyllenhaal gives it a nice leg-up. Supremely calm, but with an almost loopy grin, he is the picture of courtesy, enquiring about an aggressive biker’s medical insurance before effortlessly putting him in hospital. And this is an engaging double-act: besides Gyllenhaal’s amiable turn, there’s the bar of the title, a beach-side haven in the Florida Keys with friendly staff and a variety of terrific local bands (Jelly Joseph, Natalie Bergman & Friends, CC Adcock & The Lafayette Marquis, etc).

But there’s trouble a-brewing and once he’s been taken on as a bouncer at the eponymous tavern, Elwood is faced by a twisting hierarchy of braggadocio and corruption. The aggressive biker was just the first notch on a belt tightening around his throat. And just as Elwood thrashes one threat, there’s always somebody bigger and meaner a phone call away. The mixed martial artist and professional boxer Conor McGregor makes his acting debut in the role of a particularly unhinged killer who derives orgasmic pleasure from destroying everything in his path, while his ostensible employer Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen) exudes smarm and menace like an ill-smelling snakeskin oil.

If Doug Liman’s Road House follows a prefigured formula, it powers in fresh equations to keep the algorithms fresh. Of course, there’s a romantic interest, but Ellie (Daniela Melchior) is a smart cookie who dispenses her knowledge of the world with refreshing zeal (she explains that a conch is pronounced “conk” [kɒŋk]). But Elwood warns her: “You’re a nice person – you don’t want to know me.” He appears to be frightened of nothing more than himself (he laughs in the face of a gun or a knife) and of the man he has become. Elwood Dalton is a more complicated character than the one portrayed by Swayze, or any other indestructible slab of beefcake embodied by Schwarzenegger or Statham. Only in the last stages of the remake – and it does get sickeningly violent – do we wish that Elwood would slip his hoodie back on.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, Joaquim de Almeida, JD Pardo, Austin Post, Conor McGregor, Lukas Gage, Arturo Castro, B.K. Cannon, Beau Knapp, Darren Barnet, Dominique Columbus, Bob Menery, Catfish Jean, Kevin Carroll, Travis Van Winkle, Hannah Lanier.  

Dir Doug Liman, Pro Joel Silver, Screenplay Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry, Ph Henry Braham, Pro Des Greg Berry, Ed Doc Crotzer, Music Christophe Beck, Costumes Dayna Pink, Dialect coach Brett Tyne. 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Silver Pictures-Amazon Prime.
121 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 21 March 2024. Cert. 15.