Road House (2024)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the eighties version of Road House and full disclosure, did not expect to finish this one. For some reason (Patrick Swayze), I always confuse the eighties (Patrick Swayze) Road House with Flashdance, which starred Patrick Swayze and also looks camper than a mincing Scout leader pissed on Babycham. I put on this 2024 Amazon Prime remake like a morbid looky-loo slowing down on the motorway to see what horrors I could make out in the car crash.
Swanning around oiled up with his abs out, I smelled a Jake Gyllenhaal vanity project. While he is a fine actor I still find him annoying as an action hero. See his fart sniffing super-villain The Dutch Oven in Spider-Man: Far From Home by way of evidence. Talking of annoying, Conor McGregor is also in Road House. McGregor is a UFC braggart and boxing con man whose very visage makes me want to vomit. Between these two my hopes for Road House were not at all high.
Looking for positives, because I’m told it’s good for my mental health to, Doug Liman directs Road House, and I do like a Doug Liman film though so perhaps it’s not all bad.
A mysterious, scantily clad, but hard as nails drifter wanders into a Florida beach bar and rapidly becomes its bouncer. He pisses off the wrong people (who to be fair were already pissed off) and things go from bad to worse via plenty of fights. Road House starts off with a decent sense of humour, which relaxed me. Well, that and the codeine I’m taking for something which definitely doesn’t involve a sore man-dangly. After about half an hour I’ll admit I was really enjoying the film.
I already didn’t like McGregor anyway so him playing a monumental bellend is at least not a stretch of his acting chops or my suspension of disbelief. His hard-man swagger as the ultimate bad guy is about as natural as his boxing though. But. Say what you want about Conor McGregor (no, really) but the guy makes good on a lot of what he does badly during Road House's fight scenes. Which is the least he could do after just being Conor McGregor all the rest of his life.
Bright, breezy and boasting an unashamed, cheesy, eighties vibe, Road House adds contemporary spectacle and effects. One hellacious bar fight really got my blood pumping, and by the ludicrous but hugely fun finale, I’ll admit, far from turn it off/driving past disappointed, I’d stopped the car, got out and put a deck chair near the burning vehicle to watch the paramedics perform CPR while I had a sandwich.
The set pieces grow (as one would hope) in scale and over the top nature, but the film is so silly they never seem out of place. A rather adept, untaxing, popcorn action film splattered with cheesy one-liners and fist on face fun. 8/10
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