Road House (2024)
Take it outside
Fun times tonight, partying down in the Keys and having a lovely time. Everyone is so chill, everyone is so relaxed. It’s totally not going to be utter chaos and fist brawls. I’m sure nobody will start yelling about how it’s not nearly as good as the original or anything like that, no never! Yeah, if you haven’t figured it out yet, we’ll be hitting a flick that I’ve put off for a while, and this will probably be the only time I don’t say it slathered in Peter Griffin stylings - tonight we check out Road House.
Fun fact - I have actually seen the original take on this movie, but it’s been so long I remember pretty much nothing but extreme basics like bouncing and Swayze. Good news is that means I get to enjoy this one for whatever it is - bad news is outside of the fact that bouncer gonna bounce I can’t speak about the comparison to the old one at all. Sorry folks - big let down from the guy who never knows source material right? Anyways, our story follows a fighter who fighters don’t want to fight due to some mysterious past that the movie will fill us in on when the time is right. A nice little roadhouse bar owner hits him up after the person they were actually looking for stands down in the fight against him and offers him a job that he declines. One thought-about suicide attempt turned conviction turning point later, our boy is off to the Keys to work himself a new job. There he makes some friends, cleans up some roadhouse, and runs into a nefarious plan larger then him that threatens more than just the roadhouse.
The actors do a good job here. Our lead manages to be crazy charismatic in here, and his evil counterpart that comes into the movie later also ends up being far more crazy-like but still charismatic. It’s just across the board people delivering likeable characters (outside of a few of the baddies who you are just supposed to hate) even if they don’t necessarily strike a person as being way out there amazing performances. For being modern people doing modern things though? Aces. Even some of the little interactions between side characters is entertaining without feeling too nuts. It’s one of those movies where everyone feels like people - well, maybe with the exception of the evil fighter guy, whose so over-the-top that his believability might not be on point as much as the entertainment value he brings.
Character-wise it’s not as well off. Yes, there’s enough there that most the main rollers feel enough like they have their own little personality, but as far as folks looking for stuff like development you’d really only be finding heavy emphasis from the main character. Side characters might get a little something like confidence boosts or the likes, but really outside of the one biker who ends up developing a case of “heck with this, these dudes are bad guys” it’s all pretty small scale at best. It works for it’s story though, nothing so limiting that it doesn’t feel like there isn’t at least one character with anything of worth to contribute. More so than individual characters though, i feel it’s how they interact - specifically with the main - that cause a lot of the characters to provide extra reason for being in the movie. Even during slower moments, it never feels like the characters interacting with each other aren’t there at least for some entertainment value or boosting things up.
Interesting coffee
Costumes are pretty modern stuff. You know what that means? Yep, that’s right - my canned expression about how that means technically they are doing a good job because everyone looks believable. There are some that are a bit fancier dressed, or more biker-thug, or mostly naked in the case of the evil fighter, but it’s all stuff that feels like you could run into it on any given day and it wouldn’t be out of place at all. Settings are similar - mostly at the Road House roadhouse, which feels very Florida to someone like me whose only visited a few times. Most of the outside evokes it to, although apparently pretty much all of it was not shot there - movie magic you know? Other places include some boats, some streets, and a book store - and surprisingly it doesn’t really feel old at all - probably because nothing ever lingers all that long. Now, just to contradict myself, I will say that there is one song where it kind of feels like it lingers on the roadhouse band a bit longer than necessary (although I assume it’s for dramatic effect to reflect on the lyrics).
Effects are pretty good. Probably the most (least?) noticeable is all the fight impacts. Seems like they did some fancy multi-take approach to get them looking as real hit as possible - and as goofy as that might sound it actually pays off pretty good because those fights look great. There’s a few times where it might give you the impression that it could be a little bit smoother - but honestly even at it’s most heavily edited fight the thing is still pretty easy to follow and clean as heck. Some of the exchanges are pretty brutal, and very much mostly all follow the logic of brawls without much in the lines of fancy flips or spin maneuvers that you might find in a more classic fight movie. Again, it does a wonderful job of being pretty real looking and feeling while still giving you enough extra that it’s got the entertainment value.
It’s not all just fight for fight sake either, there is a decent story backbone and motivations. Some of those motivations are spelled out later so we don’t have the full picture until further in, but the fact they are there does allow for more to grab at for the thinking types. Yeah, baddies gonna bad, but the main character gets you plenty of quandaries on morals, restraint, and even just some mental health sides. The great charisma of the acting force here only helps to further sell it - although ti does somewhat make the bad guys “evil plot” feel a lot less interesting or great when it ends up feeling a bit basic if not still realistic. Audio helps support your scenes and bring things up, and like I said before I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the music played at the roadhouse scenes wasn’t deliberately chosen for message sake. All of that being said, my normal curse of music-blanking strikes again outside of the riff from Metallica that makes it’s way in there.
Slap fight
This was a good movie, I enjoyed it. It’s well put together, doesn’t take longer than it needs to but still entertains and tells it’s story during the time of it. It’s a bit western, a bit modern. Maybe sometime before I forget everything I saw in this one I’ll re-watch the original so I can do a better preferential hot take and decide which one did it better. It’d hold a lot of potential, as my cousin hasn’t seen the older one but did just watch this, so it could be a first-step experiment in a series of small-scale testings of “how much does the order you’ve seen something matter” have. Anyways, it’s got great charisma, some fun character interactions, and it’s all well put together and visually solid. No real reason to not check this one out - unless perhaps you don’t meet that suggested MPAA age for the (not too graphic) violence and language.