Wow, look at me, no reviews for almost a month and then two in less than 2 days, how lucky my readers are. Well I decided to review a film which I think is one of the coolest films ever made and one I want you guys to check out if you haven't seen it yet, that film is Road House starring Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliot, It one of the most manliest films you're ever likely to see and the only thing missing to make this the single most awesome piece of man cinema is Kurt Russell, but please check out the review after the jump....
When I was kid I used to sit down with my mother and watch films that I probably shouldn't have seen at such a young age. Quite a lot of those films starred Patrick Swayze because my mum was a big fan, so at around five or six I saw Dirty Dancing for the first time because she used to put it on when she did the Ironing, but she also used to have other Swayze films too, films like Next Of Kin, Tiger Warsaw and Steel Dawn, three quite unknown Swayze flicks and one quite well known film, Road House which I think I saw for the first time around 1990. Something about the film struck a cord with me, I dunno if it was the fight scenes or the really cool music but I must have watched that film as a kid at least a hundred times. I got to the point where I wanted to be Dalton and become a bouncer at a club just so I could be as cool as him, but as I grew up I suffered terrible bullying and my self confidence was lost, I found solace in movies and Road House was one of them. I did get over the idea of becoming Dalton and a bouncer but I grew to the love the movie more, it opened me up to a different kind of music too thanks to the Blues Rock soundtrack. Now as an adult, Nothing has changed, Road House is still one of the single most bad ass films I have ever seen...
Patrick Swayze stars as Dalton, a professional 'cooler', which is really just a bad ass, don't fuck with me name for head bouncer, who's working at a New York nightclub. He's offered a job by bar owner Frank, the job is go to Missouri and take over as head of security at Frank's club, The Double Deuce . Arriving he's shoved almost immediately into a battle between thieving staff members and the local gangster who wants to buy the club. Dalton enlists the help of his old buddy and mentor, Wade Garrett to come in and help but after an altercation, the battle becomes personal and the only way for Dalton to clean up the mess is to take out the gangster once and for all.
The plot aint exactly Shakespeare now is it, but it is simple, it's straight forward and it does what it has to and within the 114 minute run time, fits in copious amounts of ass kicker and badassdom. Swayze is super cool as always playing the mysterious Dalton. This what I loved about movies from the 1980s, and producers have said this in documentaries, well the producers of the former Hollywood, that people just took chances back then. Road House would never get made these days, and if it did it would probably go straight to DVD, while I say that, it does have a sequel, a film that pisses all over the memory of this awesome film but I’m not going to talk about that as it still hurts. Swayze was such a cool mother fucker back in the day. He was the all American boy, a family man, thoroughly nice chap and not only a trained dancer but a trained martial artist. Some of his films were incredible feats of coolness. Steel Dawn, a little seen post apocalyptic samurai movies sees him kicking ass in the desert with one of the coolest swords this side of a light sabre. It's all very Mad Max but it's still such fun, then you have to look at 1984s Red Dawn, in which he leads a band of gun toting rebel high schoolers, the Wolverines' against a commie invasion, searching for his brother's killer in the Next Of Kin and of course as the most hardcore dance teacher at Kellerman's Holiday Camp, Johnny Castle in his most famous role in Dirty Dancing. It's a shame that the 90s only gave him two notable hits with Too Wong Foo and the incredible Point Break, although you can't go wrong with a bit of trucker action in Black Dog. It makes me sad that the man who played the coolest cooler of them all is no longer with us and as a mark of respect for Swayze, when I found out he'd died, I did indeed watch Road House. He'll definitely be missed by me and many many more fans.
Not only does Road House have once bad to the bone Cooler, it has two. The second in the form of Wade Garrett, the older, long haired moustachioed, gravel voiced man god of awesomeness, Sam Elliot. We is undeniably a charismatic fella, and as Wade Garrett, he turns on the charm like no other, but while he does add another level of cool to an already ice cold film, he's hugely under used. I can understand that this is a Patrick Swayze film, but he need much much more screen time. He need more time to call Dalton 'Amigo' but as with most films, he's the support and the ticket sales rely on the star. Shame really as the year before, he played once of his coolest characters in James Glickenhaus's Shakedown (aka Blue Jean Cop), Vice cop Richie Marks, who hangs from the bottom of a plane and manages to shoot it down in one of cinema's most WTF moments to come from a pretty straight forward and almost realistic cop thrillers.
Ben Gazzara who recently passed away at 81, plays the evil Brad Wesley, a millionaire who wants the land the Double Deuce is on and runs his drugs and other criminal activities through the club under the nose of the owner Frank. Gazzara plays Wesley like a child, very very naughty. If he wants something and he can't have it he'll cause trouble. Once scene has him driving a convertible along a stretch of road, weaving in and out of each lane as if he owned the street. It's a really great performance from a veteran actor and it's sad that he's no longer with us.
Rounding out the cast is Kelly Lynch as Doc, the woman who captures Dalton's heart and well that pretty much it for Lynch's character, You have to have some sort of female character in a film filled with bar room brawls, monster trucks and martial arts other wise it does come across as a bit homo-erotic, which the film does do at some points, but so does Top Gun, Over The Top, Predator, you name a film with a bunch of guys in it and someone's gonna call it gay.
A lot of reviews of Road House that I’ve read before writing this one is that a lot of people consider this a bad movie or on the cusp of bad, what are they on? That is my question, Roger Ebert's review from 1989 says this is not a good movie and he is hesitant to recommend it, only to then go on and recommend it by saying that watched in the right frame of mind, it's not a boring movie. So did he enjoy it? Im confused. I know I fucking love it and my frame of mind is always in the right mood, but then again, im sat in my living room in Cardiff typing this out and Ebert's probably sat in a palacial mansion from all the dollar dollar bill's he earned from his reviews, but hey, I ain’t in the for the money im in this to get people to watch mother fucking Road House.
The film does however have some flaws, mainly the pseudo philosophy spoken by Dalton and the fact the Double Deuce seems to be made out of paper as everything breaks so easily, but it aint like the end of the matrix with the philosophy where colonel sanders gave us all that bullshit about what ever it is he was on about, Dalton's philosophy is more Zen with things like 'nobody ever wins a fight' or 'you take the biggest man in the world, shatter his knee cap and he'll drop like a stone', bad ass philosophy, that's the shit I wanna learn.
The Soundtrack to this film is also fantastic, most of the music in the film is played by a live band led by the late great blues guitarist Jeff Healy and it fits the atmosphere and tone of the film superbly.
So you can pretty much guess what my final verdict is going to be right? Of course it's gonna be good, or should I say bad ass?. Now I know that I over use that phase way to much during my reviews and especially in this review but it seems to fit this film perfectly and to be honest, I’m not ashamed to use it, I use it on a daily basis, but I have to give my final verdict on Road House in a more professional manor. Road House is a man's movie, it's like Commando or The Wild Bunch, this ain’t a date movie and for this reason I can imagine it may not have a legion of female fans, although we all know the Swayze fans watch this, but for me growing up watching this film and now at 28 writing a 2 page review of it, I've finally come to the realisation that this film belongs in my top 5 films of all time, sure at times it can be cheesy and I know when people return to a film they've not seen in decades, they don't feel the same way they did when they first saw it, I never stopped watching it and this is why I still put it on five or six times a year. I love Road House and i'll always love it. Watch this film and watch it in the right frame of mind, don't go into this looking for a bit of cinematic art because you're gonna be disappointed, grab some beers, some popcorn and sit down and enjoy the truly entertaining slice of 80s badass cinema.
My brothers and I always end up watching this film when we're together, couldn't agree more. Awesome film, great fight scenes, great soundtrack and pure cheese brilliance!
ReplyDeleteJacob