- Starring
- Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Conor McGregor
- Director
- Doug Liman
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Action, Thriller
- Where to watch
- Amazon Prime
- Release date
- March 21, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
The original Road House, starring Patrick Swayze, gained cult status for its unique blend of action, drama, and campiness. Swayze’s character, Dalton, is a legendary cooler hired to clean up a rowdy bar in Missouri. Directed by Rowdy Herrington, the film gained notoriety for its over-the-top fight scenes and Swayze’s charismatic performance. Despite mixed critical reception upon its release in 1989, Road House has since become a beloved classic, inspiring countless homages and parodies in popular culture.
Road House (2024)
Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a retired UFC fighter who now lives a nomadic life, wandering from one underground fight to another while scratching a living off of his sordid reputation. When he’s hired to provide security at a Florida Keys Road House, he has no idea that he’ll have to do more than break up bar fights if he hopes to survive the month.
Road House (2024) firmly belongs as a VOD rather than a theatrical release. Its uneven pacing and underdeveloped characters combined with its cartoon plot aren’t worth the price of admission. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s all bad or not worth the watch.
Jake Gyllenhaal absolutely brings it. His Dalton is cool under pressure, slow to anger, and utterly convincing as a nigh unstoppable bad@$$. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton doesn’t read Legend of The Falls. He certainly doesn’t have a degree from NYU’s philosophy department, and Tai Chi and fruity spinning back kicks have been replaced with rage-filled haymakers and a WWE/UFC hybrid that looks friggin’ great on screen, especially when combined with Gyllenhaal’s commitment and Conor McGregor’s expertise.
For the most part, Road House (2024)’s camera work is fairly utilitarian, but like every other part of the film, it goes next level in the fight scenes. Road House (2024) boasts some of the best fight cinematography in the last ten years and certainly this year’s top three best fight choreography.
With the exception of Gyllenhaal and McGregor, virtually every other character is forgettable and generic. However, McGregor might have himself a new career as this generation’s Vin Jones. He’s not a terrific actor by any means, but he can obviously sell the fights, and he’s good enough and intimidating enough to be the mostly silent baddie in a Guy Ritchie flick.
The film’s pacing isn’t always consistent, with too much screen time given to unimportant events and far too little given to establishing the bad guys and giving the audience a reason to care or someone to root against. This renders the finale a little underwhelming.
That said, this Road House’s weakest point is its lack of identity. The 1989 Road House was a raunchy campfest. However, 2024’s is far more sanitized. No patrons are offering anything special for $20 or being used as a “regular Saturday night thing,” and zero throats get ripped out. By straddling the line between the original’s camp and today’s cinematic sensibilities, it sacrifices distinctiveness and relegates itself to a fun but forgettable watch.
If there’s one takeaway from Road House (2024), it’s that Jake Gyllenhaal needs to do more action flicks right now before he ages out.
WOKE ELEMENTS
DEI
- You can almost feel the studio calculus in the film. “What is the correct percentage of diversity that will offend the least number of people? What characters can be ‘diverse’?”
- The film is set in the fictional town of Glass Key, FL. However, the real Florida Keys has a black population of 3.3%. It’s rather coincidental that the only two business owners (one of which is the gal who owns the Road House) we are introduced to happen to be black. So, it’s there but it’s not made into a big deal, and even I have to admit that this is a real nitpick.
- While the henchmen are “diverse,” the two main baddies are blond-haired white guys. Of course, the main good guy is a white guy, so I guess the studio’s calculus figured that balanced things out.
Free At Last, Free At Last
- The film only has a single eye-rolling moment of wokeness artificially shoehorned in.
- Out of the blue and never mentioned again, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement are briefly and inexpertly fumbled into a completely unneeded, unwarranted, and unwanted bit o’ dialogue.
Ain’t No Eves Around These Parts
- The few female characters have little to do in this Road House, but those with speaking roles are all flawless, even the bartender.
- I can’t emphasize how little they have to do with the film or how little screen time they get. I promise that you wouldn’t have even noticed ten years ago.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
27 comments
Bunny With A Keyboard
March 24, 2024 at 9:53 pm
Is MLK really woke? The woke are focused on judging by the color of skin (or gender, sexuality, etc.) and not by the content of character. By my understanding, MLK is based.
James Carrick
March 24, 2024 at 10:11 pm
The fact that it was MLK isn’t what was woke about it. It was the fact that they shoehorned in the Civil Rights Movement. Nothing in the scene or movie had anything to do with race relations in any way, shape, or form. The line was a complete non sequitur, delivered by the diverse woman of color who owned the bar.
Bunny With A Keyboard
March 24, 2024 at 10:26 pm
Reminds me of very badly written exposition, but I get you better now.
Bunny With A Keyboard
March 24, 2024 at 10:04 pm
I never saw the original, but it sounds like they’re telling a completely different story than the original, not reusing character names, and the only tie to the original is that they’re reusing the title to keep the rights?
By my perspective, this is a good way to do remakes.
There’s an old Egyptian story where an eagle snatches the shoe of a girl, carries it all the way off to Memphis and drops it in the Pharaoh’s lap. The Pharaoh is so astonished by the event that he orders the girl found. This is considered the original Cinderella story, with so many different things changed, reworked, and revised along the way rather than trying to be the same old thing.
When the original is already perfect, this is a better method to keep the IP and make your own story. Don’t reinvent the wheel; just put rubber on the tires.
James Carrick
March 24, 2024 at 10:17 pm
They reused some names (the main character’s last name in both is Dalton), and the basic plot is the same (i.e. a bar in a small town is being terrorized by ruffians, so Dalton is recruited to provide protection. He then makes enemies with a crooked businessman who does everything he can to destroy the bar and kill Dalton).
But, in general, I agree with your point.
healthguyfsu
April 6, 2024 at 10:15 pm
I don’t think its a good way to do remakes. It is the cheapest form of knockoffery (I made that word up).
If it bears little to no resemblance to the original, why is it marketed otherwise? The difference between your Pharaoh analogy is that no one connects those two. It wasn’t cheaply marketed as a retelling of a fabled Egyptian folktale.
Also, how do you know the original is perfect if you didn’t even see it?
Jared
March 25, 2024 at 2:18 pm
I gave this movie just an “ok” rating..Fun sure but not worth a rewatch nor will I even remember it. Agree Jake is awesome in this(is he ever not ?)
James I love your reviews . So happy I found this site .
healthguyfsu
April 6, 2024 at 10:16 pm
Underrated actor in most roles
Omen Bird
March 25, 2024 at 3:45 pm
Hi, I’ve started following this site since a month or so and really appreciate the information. I just want to give some feedback to make the content better.
I think the Woke-o-meter should be redone so that there’s a neutral/non-woke default position from which it starts and wokeness adds negative points to it. Then for based elements positive points would be added.
As is, I find the woke ratings on the site quite jarring because many movies/games get the “based” rating even with multiple woke elements and no positive based elements. The detailed woke descriptions are very helpful but do somewhat expose to spoilers.
I think a big problem with conservatives is that they don’t actively posit a positive alternative path, but only harp on the negatives of woke in a reactionary manner. The fact is, western society doesn’t have a positive “based” default position anymore, it has to be put forward anew. Thus it’s not enough to treat non-woke works as “based”, we rather need to reward works which actively and boldly set out a based alternative.
If you redid the woke rating it would be much easier to see how truly woke, neutral or based a movie is directly from the score.
All the best to this endeavour
Ktuff_morning
March 26, 2024 at 3:23 pm
For the purposes of this website I’d make a meter like this:
PC gone awry—politically correct—neutral—politically incorrect—politically incorrect gone awry (dark/morbid/black)
-2 -1 0 1 2
With a value of neutral as the center you need a well-defined negative and positive pole, so PC works better.
Observe and Report: 2
Road House: 0
Shogun: 0
Ghostbusters: 0.5
Ghostbusters 2016: -1.5
Hmmm…problem. When I consider Road house it seems to be at a 45 degree angle; ultra-violent but with anti-violence pacifist messaging; gratuitous inclusivity but with a white male lead and shockingly a non-white actor playing a role of comic indignity. Right down the middle. The problem is the movie does indeed have some PC in it that might harm my fragile ego.
Bunny With A Keyboard
March 26, 2024 at 3:37 pm
Thank you for demonstrating why we use left wing propaganda as the definition, based on how movies would be ranked with your definition.
Dalton
March 26, 2024 at 9:25 pm
Watching now and it’s more woke bull######. Lets include one person of every race to fulfill our DEI initiatives. I’m sick of this ######.
FlightRisk
March 28, 2024 at 10:43 am
The new roadhouse is incredibly woke. There’s definitely some based stuff in it, but I’d say mostly woke. It’s so prevalent now I don’t think most people even see it for what it is now. And unfortunately that’s why i don’t trust this site or any of the other ‘woke or not’ review sites.
James Carrick
March 28, 2024 at 10:49 am
One of the reasons that we keep the comments section open is so that viewers can give examples of anything we miss. What did we miss?
Disappointed
April 1, 2024 at 11:50 am
So woke. Dalton can’t even order a coffee without being smeared as a racist. I had to switch it off.
At 13:00 Dalton asks the bartender ‘Can I get a black coffee?’. Bartender responds ‘Oh, uh, we don’t have that, sorry’, whilst sipping a black coffee. Dalton, understandably confused, asks ‘uh, what are you drinking?’ to which the bartender replies ‘it’s a Cuban coffee…very different’.
It is inferred that saying the words ‘black coffee’ is somehow offensive. It would be offensive if Dalton asked for ‘black coffee’ whilst referring to a Black person, but he was simply ordering a coffee without milk.
When the writer uses a simple act such as ordering a coffee as a means to cram wokeness down my throat, I’m no longer interested in watching. Unless I’ve completely misread the intent of the scene and the purpose was to mock how ridiculous the world has become (although based on some of the other comments I doubt it).
It’s a shame as it seemed this film had all the ingredients for an apolitical action packed reboot, but once again as with most film/TV these days I’m having to turn it off.
James Carrick
April 1, 2024 at 12:06 pm
Cuban coffee is a real thing and it’s very prevalent in the Keys.
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 1, 2024 at 1:31 pm
I would definitely see it as woke if you try to order black coffee and they claim they don’t have that and make a racial thing out of it, especially if someone else is drinking coffee right in front of him. If he said something like, “The only type we have is Cuban. Would you like that?” then that’d be weird in scene but would at least make sense if you’re saying all they have is Cuban. Then again, I haven’t seen it.
James Carrick
April 1, 2024 at 1:37 pm
The bartender says “We don’t have that here.” He says, “you don’t? What do you have?” She says “Cuban coffee…its very different.”
healthguyfsu
April 6, 2024 at 10:19 pm
If you knew anything about Florida culture, you would know that that is not about racism. Cuban coffee is considered its own separate thing.
GeorgeOrwell
April 10, 2024 at 3:20 am
yes this reads as an intentional woke cramfest. I’ve ordered my coffee black 1000x in my life and no one has ever corrected me by trying to give it a country of origin. This includes several months living in Florida.
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 1, 2024 at 2:54 pm
Sorry. OP phrased it differently.
Slightly less disappointed
April 1, 2024 at 5:42 pm
Apologies, my woke-o-meter was set to max sensitivity!
James Carrick
April 1, 2024 at 5:52 pm
Haha. No worries. Believe me, I get it.
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 1, 2024 at 6:24 pm
Slightly Less Disappointed, there was a time when sapient beings would have discussions, consider factors, debate, admit when they’re wrong, and forgive those who admit their mistakes. It is my honor to salute those who still live by such a method. I consider it the best way to truth.
healthguyfsu
April 6, 2024 at 10:22 pm
LOL James it appears the director doesn’t agree with your take about this being a direct streaming release and got so mad about it that he protested his own premiere.
Somehow, this is into the realm of absurdity that doesn’t even categorize under wokeness. He certainly had a lofty opinion of his own work.
https://ew.com/why-road-house-director-boycotting-his-own-movie-8549497
James Carrick
April 6, 2024 at 10:29 pm
Yeah, I read something about that, but I also read that he had the choice of either getting less to make the film and it being theatrical release, or getting a heftier paycheck for VOD, and that he chose the cash.
healthguyfsu
April 6, 2024 at 10:32 pm
If true, that makes it even spicier considering his hot takes about the actors not getting paid as much and being ineligible for awards.