Road House Review: A Ripped Jake Gyllenhaal Doesn’t Rip Any Throats In Solid B-Movie Remake

The Pitch: Ex-UFC fighter Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is living out of his car and scamming cash in underground fights when Frankie (Jessica Williams), the owner of a Florida Keys road house, asks him for help — she needs someone to settle the violent elements attempting to shut down her humble bar. In need of the work, Dalton takes the job, getting to know the locals a bit before confronting the local biker gang single-handed.

But one beatdown is only a temporary solution to the bar’s problems, because the biker gang works for Brandt (Billy Magnussen), a real estate mucketymuck who’s trying to shut down the road house for his own entrepreneurial dreams. And Brandt’s father only makes things worse by hiring a thug named Knox (Conor McGregor), a hand grenade of a human being whose level of crazy might reawaken Dalton’s worst instincts.

Pain Don’t Hurt: A remake of Road House may not have been something the world really needed, but when director Doug Liman and star Jake Gyllenhaal are cooking, they’ve got a full stew going. Bringing a beach-y vibe to a classic tale of boy meets girl and punches all the bad guys, the new Prime Video release doesn’t skimp on the fisticuffs, even while it trades Patrick Swayze’s philosophical vibes for an almost off-putting amount of UFC cross-promotion.

Despite the fact that his name is not Rowdy Herrington (who directed the original Road House, and seriously, could you possibly imagine a better name for the director of a movie like Road House), Liman brings a lot of visual flair to the numerous fight sequences, deploying a swirling, acrobatic cinematography style that adds an impressive level of immersion. And Gyllenhaal’s in top form on numerous levels, blending his capacity for puppy-dog niceness with acrobatic stunt work and some impressive beatdowns. The film is at its best when it’s just Dalton versus some dudes, who may or may not know what they’re in for.

It’s Time to Not Be Nice: The best reason to compare a remake to the original film is when you know that something’s missing from the new version, but need to figure out what that is. In this case, it’s the approach to Dalton, who in Gyllenhaal’s hands is less Zen master and more burned-out adrenaline junkie. He’s got his own sort of calm, with an emphasis on niceness that spices up his interactions with unruly gentlemen, but his interior life is limited to haunted dreams of his UFC days. “No one ever wins a fight” is the closest he comes to real wisdom (and that’s a line direct from Swayze). Read a real book, Dalton!

Not only that, but a film hits a sort of glorious level of over-the-top when the central protagonist ripped a dude’s throat out with his bare hands. And that’s something the remake lacks — even the savagery of a brutal UFC beatdown can’t really compete with literal throat-ripping. Bringing in Conor McGregor feels perhaps like the filmmakers’ attempt to solve that problem, and the UFC champ is undeniably a force unleashed on screen. However, his presence is undercut slightly by the fact that this is his film debut, so maybe this is just what he’s like? (His offscreen behavior maybe backs that up to a degree.)

Road House (Prime Video)