Jake Gyllenhaal is a daring and magnetic actor, and Doug Liman has at least a few good features under his belt (Swingers, Go, Edge of Tomorrow), but the duo’s plan to remake Road House is, on the face of it, one of the most misbegotten ventures in recent Hollywood history.
According to Variety, Amazon’s modern take on Road House will cast Gyllenhaal as a former UFC fighter who takes a job as a bouncer in the Florida Keys and “soon discovers that not everything is what it seems in this tropical paradise.” Absolutely not. Director Rowdy Herrington’s 1989 film has achieved cinematic culthood, courtesy of both its inimitable headliner and its status as a product of its particular (and unduplicatable) era. Simply put, a Road House without the ’80s is no Road House at all.
Any discussion of this most beloved of action movies must begin, first and foremost, with Patrick Swayze, who—like Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Ripley, and Jeff Bridges and The Dude—is forever synonymous with James Dalton, the ace “cooler” who’s hired by Jasper, Missouri, businessman Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to clean up his rough-and-tumble honkey-tonk, the Double Deuce. Dalton isn’t just any old bouncer; he’s “the best,” though one can tell that from the way he dresses, carries himself and calmly and methodically dispatches ruffians.
Dalton is defined by Swayze’s distinctive charisma, as well as by his trademark tan suit (with its baggy, tapered pants and shoulder-padded jacket) and his beautifully manicured mullet. That coiffure should be in the hall of fame, and it’s complemented by all sorts of gloriously big supporting-cast hair, be it Kelly Lynch’s wavy-on-top, straight-to-the-shoulders ’do or Sam Elliott’s long and splendidly dirty-gray locks (with matching scruffy beard).
Like Swayze’s silky mane, everything about Road House is intrinsically tied to the decade of its creation. That begins with its neo-Western premise, in which Dalton is cast as the famed desperado enlisted to bring law and order (and grace, panache, and morality) to a dissolute saloon establishment operating under the thumb of an evil businessman, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara). As befitting an ’80s tale, Wesley’s main goal is to become even richer than he already is, but his greedy plot hits a snag thanks to Dalton, who’s a modern archetype that marries the then and now.
Dalton drives a Mercedes-Benz as well as a Buick Riviera. He fights like hell and once killed a man, yet he also has an NYU degree in philosophy, knows martial arts, and practices meditative tai chi in the early dawn hours. He wears sweater vests and kimono-style shirts but he’s equally comfortable going shirtless, his sweaty torso covered in dive-bar battle scars. He’s old-world and new-school, urban and rural, East and West, and the absolute epitome of poised, tough, sexy cool.
Dalton may survive to the end of his adventure, but there’s no future for him because he’s a perpetual relic of his time and place, and so too is Road House, right down to its absurdist conceit; only at this precise moment of cultural excessiveness could anyone buy a straight-faced saga about the greatest bar bouncer in America being a mythic legend who risks it all for the little man and loves like a romance-novel heartthrob.
Literally every notable element of Herrington’s film screams ’80s. The bold and glitzy fashion, including the face-engulfing glasses worn by Dalton’s paramour, Dr. Elizabeth “Doc” Clay (Lynch). The ridiculously gratuitous T&A. The silly cartoonishness of the Double Deuce’s bar fights. The swinging blues rock of The Jeff Healey Band. The gargantuan monster truck that one of Wesley’s minions drives around town and inevitably uses to crush a collection of smaller vehicles. And the hilarity of having villainous sidekick Jimmy (Marshall Teague) resemble a dark-side variation of Dalton, replete with matching mullet.
Then, of course, there’s David Lee Henry and Hilary Henkin’s script, whose dialogue is awash in quippy one-liners designed for a theatrical trailer. Dalton always has a badass retort at the ready, whether he’s discussing his ironic preference for traveling (“I don’t fly—too dangerous”), laying down the law (“It’s my way or the highway”), eloquently expounding on the word “cocksucker” (“It's two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response”), humblebragging about his skills (“I'm only good at one thing, Doc—I never lose"), dispensing Zen wisdom about his brutal profession (“Nobody ever wins a fight”), or—in what may be the single greatest line ever uttered on a big screen—explaining why he has a heroically high threshold for agony (“Pain don’t hurt”). Everyone in Road House sounds like they’ve been put through an ’80s-moviespeak computer program, further amplifying the endeavor’s corniness.
Such ’80s-isms aren’t just ubiquitous; they’re woven deep into the fabric of Road House’s being. The over-the-top explosions, as if every building and car were secretly housing crates of dynamite. Dalton’s throat-ripping finishing move, which is straight out of the WWE (no wonder veteran pro wrestler Terry Funk co-stars). The motley henchmen who are as incompetent as they are heavily armed. The Rocky-esque training-in-a-barn scene. The old, grizzled mentor (in Elliott’s Wade Garrett) who shows up to save the day, provide some sage counsel for his pupil (whom he admits has also taught him plenty), and engage in brotherly bonding whose homoeroticism is ultimately magnified ten-fold by Jimmy’s late-clash pronouncement, “I used to fuck guys like you in prison!”
And don’t forget the romance between Dalton and Doc, which is chaste at first—because Dalton is nothing if not a gentleman with the ladies—and oh-so-sensual later, climaxing with the two making love against a rock fireplace while listening to Otis Redding’s "These Arms of Mine," which also set the mood for Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s initial sexytime in Dirty Dancing.
Put this all together, and what you have is the pinnacle of macho cinema and, moreover, an amazing expression of an ’80s culture that embraced—sincerely, and gleefully—its most indulgent impulses. Road House endures as a cherished action movie specifically because it’s a straight-faced reflection, and celebration, of everything that characterized the period; to remove it from that context is to lose its unique spirit and, as a result, to fundamentally misunderstand its appeal.
Many came before it, and just as many have followed in its wake, but Herrington and Swayze’s 1989 gem is a true original. Consequently, and with all due respect to Gyllenhaal and Liman, any contemporary remake is, by its very nature, doomed to miss what makes it so special in the first place.
