Down and out reboot of 1980s cult classic
ROAD HOUSE
Prime Video; Cert TBC
It’s around the 55-minute mark when everything goes sideways. Before then, Doug Liman’s dim-witted Road House reboot is just another wobbly contemporary actioner. The story is clumsy, knotted, difficult to care about; the performances range from barely engaged (we need to find a new agent for Jake Gyllenhaal) to surprisingly tolerable (the great Arturo Castro deserves an award for his comical support here).
It’s not a great film, basically — but Conor McGregor, making his hugely-anticipated screen debut as a mouthy, maniacal villain with a bad attitude and a silly walk, turns it into a horrible one.
McGregor’s performance is the stuff of nightmares. His line readings are noisy, out of time and extraordinarily irritating. His enunciation is that of a performer who thinks if he just says the words louder they’ll make more sense to the viewer.
His character is required to start fights and cause mayhem, and that’s fine, but McGregor doesn’t know how to act, not in front of a camera, and he approaches the material in a sloppy, charmless manner. It’s like watching an obnoxious toddler throw a temper tantrum in the middle of a restaurant: it makes your eyes and ears hurt, you don’t know where to look and you wish someone, anyone, would intervene. Alas, they never do.
To be fair, everyone here has had better days. Nobody asked for a Road House “reimagining”, and Liman’s thoughtless, toneless film makes the mistake of taking itself seriously. We begin with an underground scrap. Bar owner Frankie (Jessica Williams) is on the hunt for a superman bouncer to protect her beloved Florida Keys boozer. As it turns out, that someone is Elwood Dalton (Gyllenhaal), a disgraced UFC middleweight champ who now earns a crust by showing up at illegal fights and scaring the bejaysus out of his opponents.
Like Patrick Swayze’s protagonist in the 1989 original, Dalton is a man with a past. He also needs the money, and so he accepts Frankie’s offer to work at the
Road House for a month. There’s no messing about — on Dalton’s first night a group of shady motorcyclists show up and start causing trouble. You can see where this is going.
Our moody antihero doesn’t say much, and he doesn’t need to. He’s handy with his fists and, after putting the biker lads in hospital, Dalton sets about making a cosy new home for himself under the Florida sun. The peace won’t last — it seems a demented property developer (Billy Magnussen’s Ben Brandt) is the one trying to scare off Frankie’s customers.
A tetchy criminal with a powerful old man, Ben wants to build a resort on Frankie’s land, and so when his bonehead biker minions come back with broken limbs and bruised egos, his father sends in the big guns. Who is this Knox chap (McGregor) and why is he so angry? Dunno. But he likes a fight, and he won’t stop until Dalton is history.
Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow) is a capable director, and Gyllenhaal is a watchable actor, but they’re both off their game on this one. Even without McGregor, this new and unimproved Road House is a mess.
It’s constantly getting in the way of itself and comes with far too many underdeveloped subplots (see Dalton’s love affair with a local doctor and his friendship with a bookstore owner) and flimsy, cartoon baddies (there is no need for Joaquim de Almeida’s crooked cop character).
Some of its players are trying harder than others. The aforementioned Mr Castro is a hoot as a misunderstood biker who falls in with the wrong crowd, and Williams is her usual charming self as a spirited business owner who just wants to get on with her day.
Gyllenhaal, however, is perhaps miscast in the lead, and has neither the charisma nor the movie star magnetism to pull off a role like this. He’s in terrific shape, that much is certain — but his fight sequences are badly choreographed and poorly shot.
It’s all shoddy cuts, awkward angles and dodgy CGI. It doesn’t take much, then, for Road House 2.0 to completely topple, and that’s where McGregor comes in. It’s an outrageous turn, in all the wrong ways, and it spoils everything it touches.
Apparently, Mr Liman is unhappy about his film not getting a wide cinema release — the folks at Prime Video paid for it and so that’s where it’ll debut. But you know what? It’s probably for the best. A big-screen McGregor would have ruined my day.