Revisit some of Gyllenhaal’s strange, unpredictable roles
Doug Liman’s reboot of the 1989 action flick “Road House,” streaming now on Amazon Prime Video, is a re-imagining of the movie about a bouncer who’s a “fighting philosopher” starring Patrick Swayze. This new version sees Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role.
Now the first rule of enjoying the new “Road House” is to forget about the old “Road House,” which has become a cult classic. Of course, you can always stream the original, directed by Rowdy Herrington, on Amazon Prime Video, Max and Showtime (or take in Andy’s re-creation of the climax in Season 4, Episode 20 of “Parks and Recreation” on Peacock). But you’ll have more fun taking the new film as its own thing.
It’s quite alright if “Road House” simply serves as a structure upon which to hang the specific persona of a movie star. In the original, Swayze was the soulful bard of the barroom brawl; in this new version, Gyllenhaal isn’t trying to be Swayze at all. His version of Dalton is a former MMA fighter who heads for a road house in the Keys at the behest of Frankie (Jessica Williams). He’s an odd duck, and Gyllenhaal leans into the quirky persona he has honed over the past few years: a slightly unhinged, wide-eyed wild card.
Gyllenhaal may be a leading man with heartthrob looks, but he has gravitated toward more challenging and offbeat roles, starting with “Donnie Darko” in 2001 (streaming on Peacock, Tubi, Kanopy, Shudder and AMC+). But in the past few years, he has amped up the action, and leaned further into strange and unpredictable characters.
Take, for example, “Ambulance,” the 2022 Michael Bay ripper, in which Gyllenhaal’s Danny Sharp hijacks an ambulance as part of a bank heist and takes it, his brother and a couple of hostages on a joyride around Los Angeles. Gyllenhaal is on one in this action movie, his tone perfectly matching Bay’s signature outlandish style. Stream it on Starz or rent it on other digital platforms.
In another Los Angeles-set thriller, Gyllenhaal was transformed in Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler,” starring as Louis Bloom, a police scanner-chasing amateur “journalist” selling gruesome crime scene footage to TV news stations. Louis lives on the fringes of society, hoping for a big break, like so many dreamers in the City of Angels. Gyllenhaal’s performance is truly captivating and chilling. Stream it on Starz or rent it on other digital platforms.
He also displayed his wackier side in supporting roles in Bong Joon
Ho’s 2017 creature feature “Okja”; 2019’s “Velvet Buzzsaw,” Gilroy’s art world send-up; and the comedy special “John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch.” Stream all three on Netflix.
But he has also developed his action bona fides too, including in the 2023’s underrated drama “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” in which he brings his signature intensity to a
U.S. veteran seeking the Afghan interpreter who helped save him (stream it on Amazon Prime Video or rent it elsewhere). He also did some sci-fi in 2017 with the “Alien” homage “Life,” also streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
But perhaps the performance that puts it all together is, surprisingly, Marvel’s “Spider-Man:
Far From Home” (2019), in which he plays, well, a mysterious villain named Mysterio (aka Quentin Beck). Only Gyllenhaal could play a character that is that bizarre and compelling in a Marvel movie opposite Tom Holland and truly make it work. Stream it on Disney+.