The New 'Road House' Shows the Perils of Adapting Ridiculous 80s Movies

I watched Rowdy Herrington’s 1989 Road House recently and it was revelatory. When people joke about how movie executives in the 1980s did mountains of cocaine, Road House is the type of film those executives greenlit.

Patrick Swayze plays James Dalton, a bouncer who is recruited by businessman Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to run security at his Missouri club, the Double Deuce. The Double Deuce is a fantastical type of bar where patrons get into violent knife fights nightly and the live band needs to be protected from clientele by a chain link fence. The legal liability alone for this establishment would create gargantuan costs, yet Tilghman still has enough money to pay Dalton a good fee to clean the place up. (Side note: we never learn what Tilghman’s whole deal is, which is one of several subplots that never gets resolved).

Eventually it becomes clear that local crime lord Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) is partially responsible for the Double Deuce’s insolvency, and as a bonus: Wesley also decides to start terrorizing the townspeople. It’s up to Dalton to stop the evil dapper businessman, get the girl, and save the day.

It’s almost irrelevant to talk about wacky movies like Road House in terms like “great” or “terrible.” Instead, I’d describe it as “culturally distinct”; it adeptly captures the context in which it was made. Road House is genetically engineered for the male gaze and to make actors like Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott (looking the hottest a man has ever looked on screen) into cool, aspirational figures. Its ludicrous plot and shoddy storytelling are just as much features as bugs, and serve as evidence that few outlandish ideas were rejected during the filmmaking process. It’s campy, it’s wild, and it’s frequently a joyous experience. The film can barely be described to take place on Earth, let alone a recognizable version of 1980s Missouri.

The question that faced Doug Liman’s modern remake of Road House is which direction it would choose to go. Would it lean into the campy tone of its predecessor and go wild, or would it instead opt for something more grounded, realistic, and gritty?

The answer to that question is “yes.”

In Doug Liman’s Road House (heretofore referred to as New Road House), Jake Gyllenhaal plays Elwood Dalton, a former UFC fighter who’s recruited by business owner Frankie (Jessica Williams) to help clean up a roadhouse (whose name is actually The Road House) in the Florida Keys. The beginning of the film finds him down on his luck and near-suicidal, but he decides to journey to the Keys in the hopes of finding purpose. Unlike Patrick Swayze’s version of the character, Elwood is haunted by an incident in which he lost control in the UFC ring (vs. having ripped a guy’s throat out).

While many of the contours of the plot are the same, New Road House takes things much more seriously. Elwood has a more believable backstory for a bouncer/drifter, with a psychopathic streak. And Frankie’s Road House is not just a struggling small business, but actually an obstacle for an evil local developer who wants to make big changes to the area and destroy its individuality. While the film’s premise is the same, the fights are more brutal and the ending deviates dramatically from the original in ways that I won’t reveal here.

The problem is that New Road House never really nails its tone. At first blush, New Road House is a more grounded version of the story. Many of the film’s action scenes are brutal — shot using close-up wide angles and with continuous shots that put us into the subjective perspective of the characters. We theoretically feel every punch and hit, and it can be messy and occasionally gross.

But the movie also features characters like Knox, played by Conor McGregor, whose performance is so over-the-top as to be self-parody. McGregor struts through the movie as though he’s just some guy who’s really excited to be on a Hollywood movie set (because he probably was!) but anytime his character speaks, he destroys any immersion I might’ve had into a grittier version of this world. The ridiculous third act shenanigans also reinforce the idea that this is a film that didn’t know how seriously to take itself.

There are a handful of other issues. While Gyllenhaal looks the part and clearly honed his body to make this role work, he doesn’t have much chemistry with Daniela Melchior, who plays love interest Ellie (who plays a more critical part of the plot this time around). The CG that’s used throughout the film is often distracting and occasionally bad. The main plot, which features a fun Billy Magnussen as the villain trying to destroy The Road House, doesn’t really make any sense if you think about it for longer than 15 seconds.

But the biggest issue is that where Road House felt like the result of deranged minds trying and failing to make a great film, New Road House feels like the result of pretty normal, competent people trying and failing to make a great film. New Road House is pretty disposable and not particularly distinctive. And when the movie that inspired you features shirtless Patrick Swayze ripping people’s throats out, that’s kind of a problem.

New Road House can be streamed on Prime Video. What did you think of the film? Let me know in the comments.

Other Stuff David Chen Has Made

• Over on Decoding TV, @joyonapping and I finally finished our review of The Crown Season 6 and offered some thoughts on the most recent media situation with the Royal Family.
• Also on Decoding TV, we’re continuing our coverage of Shogun and other great shows like The Gentlemen, Manhunt, and this week, 3 Body Problem. Give it a subscribe!

• On The Filmcast, we discussed Love Lies Bleeding with BJ Colangelo. It’s a fun, sexy thriller!