 It's 2024 and we have another remake, and it's an Amazon exclusive, that's not promising. It's called Roadhouse, and it's starring Jake Gyllenhaal, not Patrick Swayze, that was back in 1989. Remember that chestnut? I do. So I went into this very chip on my shoulder like, and I came out on the other side thinking, you know what? Let's talk about it. Before I get into my review, if you could do me a favor and do a dramatic roundhouse kick to the subscribe button while looking at the camera and saying in a stern voice, Roadhouse, I would appreciate it. Do your best Peter Griffin, if you will. Okay, my thoughts really quickly, and then I'll get into the reasons why. I thought this was pretty enjoyable. Not amazing, not, I mean, not great, but it was good. I thought it was good. It's about two hours long. I watched it this morning with my son, who had sadly no idea what the original 89 film was with Patrick Swayze. Haven't shown him every movie yet, and apparently I missed one of the best. No, thoughts on the original. It's campy as hell. It's corny, it's cheesy, schlocky fun. I really enjoy Roadhouse, Patrick Swayze edition. I like that he is this kind of early on John Wick character. Has very little to say. Everyone knows who he is. He has a name, he has recognition, and he goes from town to town cleaning up the acts of bars. He's referred to as a cooler. He's the guy you call when no one else can get things done. And it's a little weird that this remake never once refers to Gyllenhaal's character as a cooler. That kind of, I don't know if it annoyed me, but I just found it kind of bizarre. The movie's close enough to the original, but this is another one of those instances where I just think, why? Why do we have to take the name Roadhouse? You could have called this anything else, and it would have been perfectly fine. And then I answer my own question. Well, obviously it's name recognition. They want to draw in audiences by throwing Roadhouse in the title. That's enough to get a lot of guys on board. Jake Gyllenhaal's playing Dalton. He's doing the Swayze thing. He doesn't talk a lot. He smiles. He looks good. He's jacked as all crap. It's just really hard to separate the two films to get over yourself and get over what came before because this movie is so tied to what you know already. But when things are missing or changed or out of place, you just sit there going, why did you make this choice? Why didn't you do this? Why isn't he called a cooler? Why doesn't he have like a conversation with the guys at the new bar, telling them how to act, how to deal with people? It just kind of more organically happens as fights are taking place. He'll jump in and be like, okay, make sure to bend your knees and watch out for the knife behind his back. Instead of having a session ahead of time when the bar is not open and be like, all right, this is what I expect from you assholes. There's the door if you don't agree. I thought that was way better in the 80s. That said, I don't think Roadhouse holds up for new generations. They're not gonna seek this movie out. It's not a touchstone classic in the eyes of cinema. It's just a fun action movie that we all know because we grew up with it. I shouldn't say we all know. There's plenty of people that haven't seen it and they might be interested in this one. Fair enough. I just get hung up on titles and the marketing behind it, but I get the purpose. You gotta bring in bodies. You gotta bring in revenue. Odd that it's not going to theaters. Very odd that it's not going to theaters. What works in this movie? There's a lot of action. And I dig the visceral camera approach, the loosey-goosey feel of the camera. It's way up in the business of people. It's in and out, but it's not like too close where you can't see. You can always see what's happening. It's like a modernized version of a Jason Bourne film. You know how obnoxious those could get when the camera's just like everywhere. And it's for some reason, like filming the guy's shoelaces and then it's around the corner, filming a car driving by instead of the action over here. It doesn't do that. It has like a fluid camera motion and you're able to see everything that's happening for better and worse. Occasionally some punches are definitely pulled. There is some herky jerkiness when there's cuts that are obvious where it's not fluidly moving as well as it should. But for the most part, I really dug this setup. I think it worked and it gave this movie ironically an identity of its own when it's very much trying to take from what came before it. This camera is just deacon and dodging. Guys are punching. Chairs are flying over. They got all pipes. They throw bottles. I don't think there was any roundhouse kicking in the entire film. Maybe that's fair, because that's Swayze's. That's Swayze's kick. So a lot of action. And I will say the first two thirds of this movie are just kind of fine in that department. But that final act, when all bets are off and we get to see Jill Nehal kind of go a little bit more animalistic, that's when the movie really hits for me when it does have more fun and go a little bit more out there with some of the action scenes. We have a face-off-esque battle on a boat that I thought was really well done. I was laughing multiple times in a good way, in that fun kind of retro feel. Like, yes, this is so ridiculous. I love this stuff. And so I was feeling it. I was having a good time. I like that there's a tiny bit of a love story, but it's not forced like an old Top Gun movie or even the original Road House. I don't know anybody that gives a shit about any of the romance stuff in any movie ever. Anytime a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie was on, there would always be a hot blonde. It was like just the go-to stock character you use. And every single time he beats up a bunch of dudes, takes her back to his place, they bang, goes out, fights more guys, wash runs repeat, every single movie. It was so old and playbook-y and I don't think anybody ever cared about it. So I'm glad that modern movies are kind of getting rid of that whole angle. It's like, eh, eh, not worth our time. We'll put it in there a little bit. We'll give him some humanity and then we'll move on to have him killing people. The supporting character is all pretty serviceable too. It's 2024 again. So naturally we're doing some race swaps. We're doing some gender swaps. We're replacing characters. None of it felt insulting though or preachy or any of that. It was just different characters or reworked characters and that was fine. That was perfectly fine. I thought the setting was beautiful. I really enjoyed the villains in this one a lot more than the original version. There was some energy to them. There was some life to them. Some of the henchmen especially had actual characters which were great. One of the guys was kind of nice and he didn't really wanna be in the situation he was in. Pretty good comedy there. Connor McGregor who I'm not familiar with for anything. I don't know if he's UFC guy or something but he shows up halfway through. He's just massive and he's playing this wild card Joker style character. Doesn't give a shit about anyone. He's smashing cars in the walls. He's stealing people's clothes. He's just this Terminator style dude and I thought he was fun as hell whenever he showed up. Really changed the dynamic and the energy of the movie for me and from his point going forward I was all in on this movie. Earlier on I was kinda like yeah, yeah it's fine. It's doing its own thing kind of but also stealing a lot of lines and stuff but then the second half it felt like its own movie and that I was on board for. Overall I think this is worth a watch for action junkies out there. There is some good fighting. There's some great fighting later on in the movie. Some really heavy action. A lot of swearing. No nudity outside of Colin McGregor's ass. He's walking, he's parading around naked for a while but nothing else outside of that. Yeah it's a fun watch. Like I said I watched it with my 11 year old almost 12 year old son. We had a good time. He was interested in the original after that cause I said there was another one. So I guess in that sense it does a little bit of service promoting the one that came before and maybe at the end of the day that's the one we can look for. But that's Roadhouse, a perfectly fun decent time at the theater at your house because it didn't go to theaters. Let me know if you saw this movie. Please like the video. Again I would appreciate you just knuckle punching that subscribe button if you would. Looking at the camera deadpan Roadhouse and then I'll see you next time. That would be ideal. That would be perfectly ideal if you did that. And hopefully I do see you next time. All right, take care.