Road House

"Road House" feels like the highest budget 'made for TV' movie ever. Despite the money thrown at it, blockbuster director, and casting of Jake Gyllenhaal the movie overall falls completely flat with awful dialogue, uninteresting characters, and a storyline so thin you can see through it.

The only positive about this movie is there were some very creative shots in the fight scenes, but even those were relatively uneven. And Connor McGregor was given far too much (poorly written) dialogue which combined with his vapid delivery takes you right out of the movie.

Overall it feels like "Road House" was the product of someone giving a 13 year old boy absolute control of a Hollywood production. The upside to this is the chaotic mess they left behind is somewhat entertaining.

One of the great things about the original Road House was seeing Dalton clean house and improve the bar bit by bit. That is severely lacking here with next to no time spent in the actual Road House and barely any screen time is given to the people at the bar. One of the highlights of the Swayze movie was him getting to know the staff and getting rid of the bad elements at the bar. Nothing of the sort goes on in this movie.

Jaoquim de Almeida is wasted as the sheriff and has little to do while Daniela Melchior has less of a role than Kelly Lynch had in the original if that was possible.

The movie's saving grace is Jake Gyllenhaal who is clearly having a lot of fun in the role and has good chemistry with an OTT Conor McGregor in the movies best moments. Best stick to the original cult classic.

(Glad to see Arturo Castro's Moe live, by far and away the best character in the whole movie).

Road House is exactly what it needs to be. A self-serious yet simultaneously very silly modern day riff on the Western that's packed with testosterone, crunchy action and jokes in the most unexpected places. It feels like a streaming movie in some distracting ways but it still remains one of the better ones.

Jake Gyllenhaal brings a natural intensity to Dalton as well as an impressive physical commitment. It's the possibility of his rage that he always keeps at bay that makes him so watchable in this role as he beats up his enemies and then makes sure they're okay before actually driving them to the hospital.

From the moment he's introduced, Conor McGregor is definitely something. It's the kind of performance that's never boring and never good. Every single line is delivered in hilariously awful fashion and yet he's one of the best parts of the film as he takes a very generically unhinged villain and makes it his own.

Doug Liman's direction certainly has a lot of energy as it alternates between fights in the first person, drone shots and simply getting as close as possible to the action. The fights themselves have a real weight to them with the heaviest blows really being felt however, some of the CG flourishes used to stitch them together distract rather than enhance.

Jake Gyllenhaal was fine, but outside of that this film was horrible! Doug Liman directed this? Seriously?

The storyline was weak. Casting was terrible (i hate films that cast for political correctness vs. Talent). Script was true cornball. They made Conor McGregor into a ridiculous, maniacally grinning robot.

I actually feel bad for Gyllenhaal who obviously trained hard for this disaster, and he has nothing to show for it.

The original was no great masterpiece but at least it was fun to watch and it had a good story to it. This can't hold a candle to that one.

(btw, who keeps giving Post Malone these opening cameos?)

Ok fact: remakes suck.

Going into this, I wanted to hate it. Remake of an 80's classic and Jake G? Recipe for disaster. But..... this is a remake in name only. Fresh story, the only connection to the original is he's a bouncer for hire. I'll admit it, this stands up on its own.

For lack of anything better to watch I gave this a shot. Color me surprised but I enjoyed the heck out of it. No agenda, just an old school action movie. Now the AI/CGI was nothing short of terrible, but if you look past that this movie embodies the old school Western movies it clearly mimics (and references several times, a bit on the nose).

Was I entertained? Yup. Was it Oscar worthy? No, but I'll take entertaining over Oscar Worthy every time.

Give it a shot, you may just enjoy yourself.