Review: Road House

Patrick Swayze plays Dalton, a top bouncer recruited by Kevin Tighe (cast against type) to clean up his rowdy bar in Jasper, Kansas City (A fictional town, as Jasper is really in Missouri). Unfortunately, the town is ruled with an iron fist by gangster Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), who has a habit of sending his goons around to mess with establishments who won’t play ball when he tries to extort from them. Dalton (who is into philosophy and Tai-Chi!) doesn’t take kindly to Wesley’s corruption, and further pisses the crime boss off by taking with the pretty doctor (Kelly Lynch) Wesley happens to be sweet on. With Wesley continuing to put the pressure on Dalton, he decides to call in a ringer, his good buddy and fellow bouncer Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott) so they can take Wesley and his gang of goons down and clean up the town. Kathleen Wilhoite plays a bartender, Red West plays a defiant local store owner, Marshall Teague plays Wesley’s karate-kicking chief henchman, Keith David plays a bartender, John Doe and Terry Funk play a couple of sour local thugs who get on the wrong side of Dalton and end up hooking up with Wesley. The Jeff Healey Band perform on screen as the bar band, with Healey himself (in his first and last acting role) playing Dalton’s buddy Cody.

 

Like the later “Point Break”, this is another idiotic actioner…and pretty damn underrated. Sure, “Point Break” is easily the better film, but that one was helmed by Kathy Bigelow, this 1989 actioner is the work of one Rowdy Herrington (OK films like “Jack’s Back” and “Gladiator”), a journeyman, not a visual stylist like Bigelow. It’s good, violent, dumb fun…just don’t try to tell anyone it’s art. You can’t hate this one: It’s got Swayze, Sam Elliott, blues rock, and mullets. What more could you possibly want?

 

Sure, Kevin Tighe’s character feels like parts were left on the cutting room floor, and Kelly Lynch has always been one of the lesser model-actresses (Rene Russo, she ain’t!), but the rest is almost too much fun. Watch the scene where Swayze is doing Tai Chi and tell me that this thing is meant to be taken completely seriously. Don’t get me wrong, Swayze was a pretty serious dude. Rowdy Herrington? Not so serious. The funniest thing in the entire film is the one thing that Herrington probably meant for us to take seriously: A bespectacled Kelly Lynch as a doctor. Yeah…no. But the rest? It’s deliberate cheese, albeit with a side order of folksy authenticity supplied by Red West and ‘Sunshine’ Parker that just can’t be taught. Swayze is Swayze, and you can’t deny he’s got a ton of charisma and what really helped him as an actor was an innate sincerity that always made him appealing on screen. You get some of that even in something like this, as well as enough macho confidence to fake it in the fight scenes. His spin kicks aren’t in the league of Scott Adkins, and it’s pretty obvious that Marshall Teague is a much better fighter than Swayze and Sam Elliott combined. However, Swayze (who was trained in kick-boxing for the film, apparently) doesn’t look too silly, which can’t be said of Mr. Teague, whose denim-on-denim ensemble is just wrong. Also wrong is his attempt at macho one-liners: ‘I used to fuck guys like you in prison!’- WHAT? Are you sure you wanna be admitting that, Mr. Teague? Sam Elliott isn’t in the film until the second half, and even then he’s not in it as much as you’d like. Every film could use a little Sam Elliott, the guy is freaking awesome, as is his greasy, stringy long hair here. It was already a fun film in the first half, but Elliott gives it an extra lift. Like Billy Dee Williams and the late James Coburn, Elliott is just plain cool. The best performance in the entire film probably comes from Ben Gazzara, who seems to be having a whale of a time as the villain, without going too far overboard. It’s one of his best performances of the last 30 years or so, actually. In a film full of ridiculousness, Gazzara’s ‘trophy room’ takes the freaking cake. That’s a lotta dead animals he’s got right there, did he shoot up the local zoo? It’s a shame that the charismatic Keith David gets such a tiny role in this, and unlike Tighe a trip to IMDb does indeed confirm that his role was cut down considerably. That’s a real shame, as the guy has talent and presence. Kathleen Wilhoite isn’t in the film much, either, but she gets the film’s best reaction shot. You’ll know it when you see it, and women in particular will appreciate it. Look out for crazy-arse wrestling legend Terry Funk as an a-hole bouncer who gets booted out by Swayze. His acting is quite a bit better than you might expect. How in the hell did Bill McKinney and Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb miss out on a gig in this?

 

Also deserving a mention is the late, underrated Jeff Healey and his band, who perform on-screen throughout the film. They do a bunch of rock-solid blues rock covers of songs like ‘Roadhouse Blues’ (natch), ‘White Room’, ‘Knock on Wood’ (with co-star Kathleen Wilhoite sharing the vocals), ‘On the Road Again’, etc. Their version of ‘Travellin’ Band’ isn’t a patch on CCR’s, but neither was Def Leppard’s live cover, and I love Def Leppard almost as much as I love CCR. Healey was a talented guy, and sadly missed to this day. The film has also been expertly shot by Dean Cundey (“Halloween”, “The Fog”, “Back to the Future”), whose lighting is particularly nice, as usual.

 

Look, it’s called “Road House”, it’s a Joel Silver (“Lethal Weapon”, “Die Hard”) action movie about bouncers, and it’s directed by a guy named Rowdy. It is what it is, and it ain’t interested in being anything else. I for one, find it a lot of dumb, macho fun. Others may be considerably less amused, just don’t tell me it’s a bad movie. It’s cheesy, not bad. Fuck it, it’s a good movie. There, I said it. Credibility be damned! If you can’t find at least something to enjoy about this movie, then I’m afraid you and I just can’t hang. The screenplay is by Hilary Henkin (“Romeo is Bleeding”) and David Lee Henry (“Out for Justice”, the terrible “8 Million Ways to Die”).

 

Fun Fact: Several of the characters in the film are named after famed real-life figures of the Wild West, such as Dalton (of the Dalton Gang), John Wesley Hardin, Doc Holliday, Pat Garrett, Emmett (one of the famed Dalton gang), and Younger.

 

Rating: B-