SXSW Film Review: Road House

At last night’s world premiere of MGM’s Road House, host and superfan Dax Shepard learned an important lesson: never give Conor McGregor the mic.

The remake of the Eighties’ brawling classic was the opening night film at South by Southwest, and a packed Paramount Theatre was rocked and socked by director Doug Liman’s new riff on the story of a bouncer with a soul. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the part of Dalton, but wisely doesn’t try to pull on the blue jeans that helped make Patrick Swayze both an action star and a heartthrob. Indeed, the script by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry ducks and weaves away from many of the details of the original story by David Lee Henry. The titular Road House is no longer a honky-tonk in Missouri, but a beachfront tiki bar in the Florida Keys. There’s no house band, but rather a succession of musical acts, because who would dare try to sub in for the Jeff Healey Band and their rollicking 12-bar blues? The chickenshit tough guy who doesn’t really dare face off with Dalton is no longer death match wrestler Terry Funk but affable singer Post Malone. And, most importantly Dalton isn’t a former New York cooler with a PhD but an ex-UFC fighter who is now living out of his car.

But the broad beats are the same, most especially that Dalton is a man who sees violence as the last resort – not because he fears losing, but because he’s so damn good at it. Gyllenhaal hasn’t looked this lean and cut since 2015’s Southpaw, while McGregor (in his first ever acting role) is his polar opposite, a swaggering beast called Knox who hits first and thinks later. He’s the heavy deployed to help corrupt developer Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen, channeling his best inner Skarsgård) in his scheme to run Road House owner Frankie (Jessica Williams) out.

The original film was built on contradictions, a raucous action flick about a man who rarely and ruefully engages in combat. In some ways, it was a modern Shane and, if anything, this remake is even closer to that mournful Western – there’s even a book-loving teen, Charlie (Hannah Lanier), on hand to tell Dalton he’s basically the white-hatted gunslinger brought into town. And this may be where the character varies greatest from Swayze’s Zen warrior. The Buddhist mantras are replaced by a certain nihilism that Gyllenhaal masks under a laid-back smile. If anything, this is Shane with more jokes – many of them earned by breakout star Darren Barnet as hapless biker Sam.

Post-screening, Shepard attempted to herd a packed stage full of cast members in a Q&A, but it rapidly became the Notorious MMA show – which anyone who has followed the career of the biggest mouth in fighting would know was inevitable. The Dublin brawler grappled with every question, whether they were aimed at him or not, making for an entertaining, if not that informative, evening.

However, one person overshadowed the multi-time UFC champion: director Doug Liman, who had publicly stated he would boycott the screening in protest over Amazon’s decision to bypass cinemas and send the film straight to streaming. Gyllenhaal made sure to point him out in the audience, where he received a standing ovation for the audience. He did, pointedly, demur on joining the cast on stage (rumor has it that he flew in that day on his own dime, just for the screening).

Road House is loaded with star power from a multiplicity of creative backgrounds (making the East Austin afterparty a selfie-seekers delight once they got past the flotilla of celebrity security guards). Yet the real star may be Liman’s direction. The fights are the polar opposite of his gritty veritas on The Bourne Identity, and arguably closer to the drugged-out energy of his 1999 ecstatic romp Go. POV shots of punches, concussion blur, and McGregor as a giant cartoon of himself all scream over some big misses in the script. Most especially, Dalton’s awkward dating of Daniela Melchior's local doctor, Ellie, is a featherweight imitation of the original’s stunning romance.

But Road House gets in the octagon and puts on an entertaining fight. It may not be an all-timer like the original, but it’ll sure as hell leave some fun bruises.

Road House

Headliner, World Premiere

Friday, March 8, 6pm, Paramount Theatre