First off: Why does a real-life axhole like Conor MacGregor get to receive a paycheck over a movie that is supposed to put axholes in their rightful place?
Everything else aside, I cannot manage to wrap my head around that kinda casting. Does he do the job well, providing some weird plastic value as a wild creature? Hell yes! But I don't like this type of people and I don't think movies should go so overboard with their options when trying to convince us to what the story is supposed to really mean.
That said... Yeah, this was some entertaining reboot of the 80s classic. But had it been someone else and not Jake Gyllenhaal in the titular role, it'd suck big time. More than half the film's appeal and energy is owed to JG's acting skills and persona. He's developed a character from scratch, exchanging the coolness of Patrick Swayze with a moderately fun character who falls not far from Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. And it works. Yeah, the emotional trauma does not really blend well with how he can take things so lightly, but there are all types of responses to dark memories, who knows. The character wasn't too unconvincing after all.
What wasn't convincing was the dynamics of the story. Even though they have kept an important deal of the no-holds-barred chaos from the original, this one is less credible when it comes to who does what for which particular reason. They have paid just too much attention to certain, incredibly well-shot scenes, while totally ignoring to give some credibility to the love story.
We got four major detachments from the source material, each of which hold this movie back:
1. Where the F is Wade Garrett?!? This film has NO Sam Elliott! He was the surpise, the soul and the ace in the hole for the original! Why have they paid money to a professional oaf like Conor and didn't even care to put into the script someone who could be today's mid-aged Sam Elliott? Where's the friendship between two tough fighters who are there for one another?
2. Yeah, the original Road House was violent AF, too. But this one pushes the boundaries to some nasty grounds. Generally speaking, I don't like to see this kind and level of violence on film. Auteur cinema like Kill Bill can absorb certain graphic details, but the Fast and Furious kinda excess with action scenes do not make up for the underlying loss. Especially with this reboot, it does not.
3. Where are the townspeople? Where is the town itself? Look, the source material may have been absurd in many aspects but it actually DID fall well into the Western patterns of "stranger saving the day", like in how Sergio Leone had adapted Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Lame, unconvincing or cliché as it may be, that underlying theme STILL could serve as a backbone. Why have they skipped it so easily?!? Yeah, the girl at the book store was a moderately-developed character who helped point at why they might have tried the "shortcut" to placing the hero into the story, kinda like breaking the fourth wall, but it comes just too short when the interaction with "the spirit of the town" is almost inexistent... There are too few secondary characters in this reboot to help strengthen and solidify the dynamics as needed... FFS, they have even replaced the "bad guy" with his son, putting the actual dude in prison, but we don't even get to see the man!
4- Swayze's Dalton was a "cooler", a "man of the trade" who developed fame not only over how he had once killed a man, but also over how well he knew to control patrons of such joints. Especially in the earlier scenes, he was to nightlife security what Miyagi was to Karate. There's not even a trace of that in this remake. Gyllenhall is just a fighter, not a professional when it comes to road house security. Hard to figure out why they totally skipped that. It was a major selling point with the original.
The four major deficits listed above account for 90% of what's wrong with this IMO.
But still, it's watchable as an action flick, mostly thanks to its star.
Everything else aside, I cannot manage to wrap my head around that kinda casting. Does he do the job well, providing some weird plastic value as a wild creature? Hell yes! But I don't like this type of people and I don't think movies should go so overboard with their options when trying to convince us to what the story is supposed to really mean.
That said... Yeah, this was some entertaining reboot of the 80s classic. But had it been someone else and not Jake Gyllenhaal in the titular role, it'd suck big time. More than half the film's appeal and energy is owed to JG's acting skills and persona. He's developed a character from scratch, exchanging the coolness of Patrick Swayze with a moderately fun character who falls not far from Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. And it works. Yeah, the emotional trauma does not really blend well with how he can take things so lightly, but there are all types of responses to dark memories, who knows. The character wasn't too unconvincing after all.
What wasn't convincing was the dynamics of the story. Even though they have kept an important deal of the no-holds-barred chaos from the original, this one is less credible when it comes to who does what for which particular reason. They have paid just too much attention to certain, incredibly well-shot scenes, while totally ignoring to give some credibility to the love story.
We got four major detachments from the source material, each of which hold this movie back:
1. Where the F is Wade Garrett?!? This film has NO Sam Elliott! He was the surpise, the soul and the ace in the hole for the original! Why have they paid money to a professional oaf like Conor and didn't even care to put into the script someone who could be today's mid-aged Sam Elliott? Where's the friendship between two tough fighters who are there for one another?
2. Yeah, the original Road House was violent AF, too. But this one pushes the boundaries to some nasty grounds. Generally speaking, I don't like to see this kind and level of violence on film. Auteur cinema like Kill Bill can absorb certain graphic details, but the Fast and Furious kinda excess with action scenes do not make up for the underlying loss. Especially with this reboot, it does not.
3. Where are the townspeople? Where is the town itself? Look, the source material may have been absurd in many aspects but it actually DID fall well into the Western patterns of "stranger saving the day", like in how Sergio Leone had adapted Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Lame, unconvincing or cliché as it may be, that underlying theme STILL could serve as a backbone. Why have they skipped it so easily?!? Yeah, the girl at the book store was a moderately-developed character who helped point at why they might have tried the "shortcut" to placing the hero into the story, kinda like breaking the fourth wall, but it comes just too short when the interaction with "the spirit of the town" is almost inexistent... There are too few secondary characters in this reboot to help strengthen and solidify the dynamics as needed... FFS, they have even replaced the "bad guy" with his son, putting the actual dude in prison, but we don't even get to see the man!
4- Swayze's Dalton was a "cooler", a "man of the trade" who developed fame not only over how he had once killed a man, but also over how well he knew to control patrons of such joints. Especially in the earlier scenes, he was to nightlife security what Miyagi was to Karate. There's not even a trace of that in this remake. Gyllenhall is just a fighter, not a professional when it comes to road house security. Hard to figure out why they totally skipped that. It was a major selling point with the original.
The four major deficits listed above account for 90% of what's wrong with this IMO.
But still, it's watchable as an action flick, mostly thanks to its star.