Road House (1989)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Dusty: All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your subscribers. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the comments section unless it’s absolutely necessary. And three, be nice.

Rating: R
Director: Rowdy Herrington
Writer: R. Lance Hill, Hilary Henkin
Stars: Patrick Swayze, Kelly Lynch, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzara
Release Date: May 19, 1989
Run time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

James Dalton is a professional bouncer working security for a club in New York City. Although stoic and cool-headed, Dalton is tormented by memories of a man he killed in self-defense by ripping out his throat. Businessman Frank Tillman recruits Dalton to take over security at his club, the Double Deuce, in Jasper, Missouri. Tillman plans to invest substantial funds into the dilapidated club and needs Dalton’s highly-regarded skills to tackle the endemic violence and rough customers. Dalton agrees in exchange for full authority over the club’s operations, immediately firing several employees for poor behaviour, theft, and drug dealing. For privacy, he stays in a sparse barn owned by local farmer Emmett, unaware that the mansion across the adjacent lake is owned by local business magnate and crime lord Brad Wesley, who effectively controls the town through bribery, intimidation, and violence.

Wesley’s nephew Pat, one of the fired employees, intimidates Tillman into giving him his job back and then attacks Dalton, who badly injures Pat and his accomplices. Receiving a knife wound in the process, Dalton visits the hospital where he befriends and eventually romances Dr. Elizabeth Clay, to whom Wesley is also attracted. After sending his henchmen to unsuccessfully try to disrupt business at the Double Deuce, Wesley offers to hire Dalton himself. Dalton refuses and Wesley uses his connections to prevent the Double Deuce from purchasing alcohol from any suppliers. Dalton uses his own connections to secure some alcohol supplies and reunites with his mentor, aging bouncer Wade Garrett, who comes to town after receiving a disconcerting call from Dalton. Wesley sends his men to destroy the Double Deuce’s alcohol supplies but Dalton and Garrett defeat them.

One evening, the auto shop adjacent to the Double Deuce—owned by Elizabeth’s uncle Red Webster—is destroyed in an arson attack. After Dalton and the crowds return inside the Double Deuce, they find Wesley awaiting them. He has his men fight Dalton’s bouncers and damage the bar before agreeing to leave. Wesley sabotages other businesses as the local owners discuss their futile efforts to stop him. Garrett attempts to calm Dalton, trying to assuage his guilt about killing in self-defense and his frustration at being unable to end Wesley’s campaign. Elizabeth also tries to dissuade Dalton from continuing before Emmett’s home is blown up by Wesley’s henchman Jimmy Reno. Although Emmett is saved, the enraged Dalton fights Reno and rips his throat out, killing him, to Elizabeth’s shock and disgust.

Wesley later contacts Dalton threatening that either Elizabeth or Garrett will die. Garrett is attacked but fights off his assailants while Dalton checks on Elizabeth, who is safe but unwilling to talk to Dalton any further. Dalton returns to the bar to find Garrett has been murdered. Distraught, Dalton storms Wesley’s estate, kills most of his henchmen, and defeats but refrains from killing Wesley, refusing to give in to his anger, recieving a gunshot wound in the process by Wesley. Elizabeth arrives and reconciles with Dalton but Wesley recovers and attempts to shoot him before being shot dead by the locals, including Emmett and Red. The police arrive but all present claim that they saw nothing.

Sometime later, the modernized and refined Double Deuce bustles with customers while Dalton and Elizabeth swim together in a lake.

REACTION:

When I try to think of how I might describe Road House to someone, “gratuitous” and “ridiculous” come to mind. The movie is almost one long continuous bar fight, broken up occasionally by its romantic B plot. When the escalating bar fight starts to overlap with the romance story (the crime boss likes Dalton’s new girl and always has) then the fighting escalates to include bombings, fires, shootings, stabbings, and Swayze’s Dalton RIPPING OUT A GUY’S THROAT.

I will readily admit that I do not have my finger on the pulse of the entertainment venue security industry, but does it actually make sense for a bar owner in Jasper, Missouri to hire a cooler from NYC? If Dalton was an NYU philosophy grad and a NYC resident, why does he have a haunted history working clubs in Memphis? I think we’re supposed to leave the movie wanting more from this Dalton character, so that maybe we can learn more of his history, etc., in a sequel, but since I don’t think there’s anyway that backstory could ever come together coherently, the plot mostly just throws in as much mystery as possible to keep the audience from asking “how?”

The villain, Brad Wesley, is almost as equally mysterious. He is clearly a total psychopath who enjoys inflicting pain on others and is not afraid to kill indiscriminately to make a point. Yet, the film does not present him in a way wherein he had been acting violently before Dalton’s arrival. No one goes from zero to blowing up houses and cars, do they In the final scene inside his mansion, his “big game trophies” included monkeys, polar bears, and a lot of other animals that were not exactly traditional trophies. How did he acquire this much power without being on the FBI’s radar? For that matter, how were the Feds not brought in to restore order after multiple murders? The alleged story of how Wesley obtained his crime lord empire is that he shook down an entire town, over several years, but other than this guy’s ow mansion, and the bar, the town looks pretty desolate.

Road House, from beginning to end, asks its audience to just suspend their disbelief.

All of the above said, Swayze and Sam Elliott’s two characters are wildly charismatic. That’s the only reason this movie works at all. You watch this and those two kind of rope you into the plot to the point that you forget how nonsensical it is. Swayze’s Dalton is stoic, dangerous, and haunted while Elliott Wade is the older and wiser mentor, with somehow even more handsomeness and sex appeal than Swayze’s character.

I think the balance walked in a movie like this is that the leading men are tough enough, and deliver enough great one-liners, to be liked by the heterosexual male audience while they are also ruggedly good-looking enough to draw in the crowd who wants to see the leading man with his shirt off. Lest anyone be left out, the movie also has the beautiful Kelly Lynch’s “Doc” character unclothed a fair amount, too. Like I said at the outset, this movie is gratuitous.

Is there a lesson / plot arc? I think the lesson is that Dalton always wins. Swayze’s character did not really grow or change. He just went through difficult things and then defeated those difficult things. The final scene features him staying in the town after the Double Deuce is cleaned up, so maybe we can infer that perhaps he put some of his past behind him. However, the most you get from the standpoint of a plot arc is that inference. Ultimately, “Dalton” is something like a wandering Marshall from an old Western. He shows up, brings order to chaos, kills a lot of people, kisses the girl (or more in this case) and then he leaves. We didn’t see him ride away, but if this movie had been given a sequel, in a new town, with new problems, we wouldn’t need to be told why he moved on.

Not everyone goes to the movies to be shown someone’s growth or to be taught a moral lesson. Some people go to the movies for the experience. For the people who want to see a very handsome man fight, suffer, and then eventually kill the bad guy, and get the girl, this movie is probably for you. The movie is well acted and the fight choreography is excellent. I liked the running joke throughout the movie of everyone telling Dalton that they thought he’d be bigger.

I definitely didn’t hate this movie. I thought – for what it is – that it was well executed and I enjoyed both Swaze and Sam Elliott’s performances That said, I have no real interest in seeing this again and I would not recommend it to others. I know there’s an audience out there who likes watching these types of films, but I am not that audience.