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Let us recognize the brave and daring act that Doug Liman has undertaken in remaking “Road House,” especially considering, and I am simply repeating what I have been told, that “Road House” is to white men over 40 what “The Color” is. purple”. to black women.
Think about it, that person also told me, mainly to prevent me from reflexively slapping them for suggesting such blasphemy. The hero of each film overcomes the darkness of his past and draws on reserves of resilience to overcome overwhelming obstacles. Well, sure. You can say the same about any number of movies.
But while Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker’s story exalts the power of sisterhood to heal intergenerational wounds inflicted by racist violence, misogyny, and all varieties of physical and emotional abuse, the multiple 1989 Golden Razzie winner preaches : “Pain doesn’t hurt.”
Separating the mental from the physical and thoughts from feelings is noble. Explains a few things, doesn’t it?
One major omission robs the new “Road House” of that flavor that made the original great: Gyllenhaal’s Dalton doesn’t have a Ph.D. in Philosophy from New York University.
The 2024 version of “Road House” is not all that. While it follows the basic architecture of the original, it’s been changed enough to lose the cellular appeal of Patrick Swayze’s masterpiece. Casting is not the problem. Replacing the late Swayze, bless his soul, is an extremely torn Jake Gyllenhaal, whose Elwood Dalton is a handsome, down-on-his-luck former mixed martial arts fighter with a sunny disposition, a dark secret, and a broken core.
Jake Gyellenhaal in “Road House” (Laura Radford/Prime Video)what he is No He’s a sought-after bouncer in the bar rescue business, just as the new diver in distress isn’t the fancy-named Double Deuce. It’s a beachfront bar in Florida (that might as well have been regurgitated from the unstable belly of a Jimmy Buffet tune) called . . . Wait for it. . . the House of the Road.
This new Dalton steps up to help a kind lady named Frankie (Jessica Williams), who is right to see potential in his thatched-roof bar. If it weren’t for the predatory biker gang who wander into the wrong place on a whim or the randos who silly beat each other up, it could be rented for weddings or tiki-themed bar mitzvahs, whatever! However, as things stand, fists can start flying for any reason or no reason at all.
But one major omission robs the new “Road House” of that flavor that made the original great. — Gyllenhaal’s Dalton He doesn’t have a PhD. in Philosophy from New York University.
If you do, you don’t include it in your medical record that you carry with you from city to city. As one does! But that detail gives this film a strange reason for being.
The old joke about philosophy degrees is that they’re meaningless unless the goal is to live in your parents’ basement or get another degree in a discipline that actually pays your bills.
“I want you to be kind until the time comes not to be.”
New York University Department of Philosophy website asks to disagree. It insists that its undergraduates be prepared for “the many professional activities that benefit from critical thinking, analysis, and argumentation (including education, law, medicine, politics, business, computing, and publishing) and for the kind of life deepened by awareness and reflection that is most worth living.” Arm bars and joint locks sold separately.
As Friedrich Nietzsche observed: “When a man feels that he has a divine mission, say to elevate, save or liberate humanity; when a man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the spokesman for supernatural imperatives. . . it is natural that he is beyond all merely reasonable standards of judgment.”
Ergo, if one were inclined to read a more layered meaning into a film directed by Rowdy Herrington, Dalton’s intellectual foundation explains his ardent devotion to restoring America’s honor by beating the drool out of sweaty, groped drunks and letting them know the local Jezebels who don’t. They don’t have to rent their tits for 10 dollars each.
When he shows up at the Double Deuce in Podunk, Missouri, USA, it’s the kind of place “where they sweep their eyes after closing,” the owner says. The disgusting customers with crooked teeth can’t keep their tongues in their mouths and break everything they see.
But Dalton has standards and ways of teaching the resident janitors, and soon they are bathing regularly and taking out the trash methodically.
“I want you to be kind,” Dalton tells his prairie diamonds in the rough, “until it’s time not to be kind.”
Conor McGregor and Jake Gyellenhaal in “Road House” (Laura Radford/Prime Video)Gyllenhaal’s Dalton is also likable, but in true Dexter Morgan fashion, “you’ll never find the body.” He smiles at the people whose bones he is about to break and even offers to take them to the hospital after completing his work.
“Nobody ever wins a fight,” he says solemnly to the handsome ER doctor who heals him, echoing the words of Swayze’s dawn tai chi practitioner.
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His friendliness is opposed to that of Knox, a psychotic, rebellious hitman aptly portrayed by Conor McGregor, an actor and MMA star associated with multiple assault cases who is practically himself. The contrast between the two men is explained in the last scene when a wise girl from the bookstore Gyllenhaal’s Dalton frequents tells him that he may not be the hero, but he’s not the villain either.
Patrick Swayze tends to a wound in a scene from the film “Road House” (1989) (United Artists/Getty Images)
By the end of the movie, Swayze’s “refrigerator” has stopped some JCPenney department store from ruining the city’s quintessentially American flavor, or whatever, and is off to fix up some other fetid garbage hole. Gyllenhaal disappears on a bus to walk the Earth. Like Caine from “Kung Fu,” or Jack Reacher, or some broke guy who can’t find a job with his philosophy degree.
The original Dalton explains his Doctor Girlfriend as “man’s quest for faith, that kind of shit” which, I’m sure, is precisely what a tenured NYU professor would love to hear the work summarized. and the teachings of his life. She asks: How did you end up being a goalkeeper?
“I guess it was luck,” he says.
That’s as philosophical as “Road House” is, and more so than we get in the new one, and let’s be honest, the only thing either of them aspires to be is having a good time. However, it is a shame that an integral nonsense that, in its own way, makes us think, is removed. And laugh.
“Roadhouse” is streaming on Amazon.
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