In the entire history of Cable TV, the 1989 movie “Road House” has probably been telecast more than any other movie, despite the fact that the entire movie is not only bad, but ridiciulous. The ending included several scenes of murder by main character James Dalton, played by the late Patrick Swayze, one witnessed by his girlfriend Dr. Elizabeth Clay, played by Kelly Lynch. Then the abrupt ending included Dalton and his doctor girlfriend hugging in a lake. All is forgiven? No police or an arrest? This entire movie, while still bad, has become a major cult film and because of this ongoing popularity, now 35 years later, the remake with the new “Road House” on Amazon Prime has been released.
The good news is that unlike many other remakes of popular movies over the years, this one is probably more different than the original than any other remake I have ever seen. There are only a few scenes that are copied from the original with the main idea, a rich local man trying to take over the Road House bar mostly intact and Dalton has a girlfriend who is also a doctor.
Anyone has to admire the hard work and physical dedication of Jake Gyllenhaal who plays Dalton for getting into such extreme shape for this role along with the many fight scenes, that include several with MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who plays Max. From recent interviews, Gyllenhaal admitted that he and McGregor made full contact during several of the scenes, risking serious injury.
Due to the different and far more involved story of this new version, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are correctly much higher than the original, 65% to 41%. Like the original version, the entire reason for watching a movie like this is for the fighting action with several fight scenes in this version more impressive than the first movie. As far as the acting, it was good for a movie of this quality with an ending that I thought was too convoluted for an overall movie idea this simple. The best scene in this movie was when Dalton beat up four men easily in the parking lot in front of the Road House bar and then, drove them to the hospital. This was a new and funny idea inside of an action movie like this one.
For fans of the original Road House, this new one is good enough to watch, once again, mostly for the action scenes. I agree with the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 65% and recommend this film, for the die hard fans of the original
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