Road House Review: Jake Gyllenhaal Action Remake Inspires Apathy

The drama behind the scenes of the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring 2024 "Road House" remake, based on the 1989 Patrick Swayze vehicle of the same name, is more exciting than anything in the actual movie itself. Director Doug Liman publicly feuded with Amazon MGM Studios over whether the film was to be released in theaters or sent directly to streaming; Liman insists it was meant for theaters, while other sources say the director accepted Amazon's offer for higher budget in exchange for sending it straight to Prime Video. Liman ultimately backed down from his proposed boycott of the movie's premiere at South by Southwest, but as of this writing, more drama is ensuing: the original movie's screenwriter R. Lance Hill (aka David Lee Henry) is suing Amazon to block the remake's release. Hill's lawsuit, according to The Los Angeles Times, claims that Amazon's rights to the IP expired before the remake was finished — and that the studio used AI in an attempt to rush the film to completion before the deadline during the SAG-AFTRA strike (Amazon denies these claims).

All this drama might have one prepared for a full-on debacle of a film. The surprise that Liman's "Road House" somehow isn't an utter disaster might go some way toward explaining why the buzz out of SXSW has been surprisingly positive. While not a disaster, however, this "Road House" also isn't much of anything. An appealing lead performance by Gyllenhaal is the only thing that sticks in the memory, while everything else about the film simply evaporates. As much as it pains me to side with the megacorporation over the director, this is a streaming-tier movie, a perfectly adequate time-waster to half-pay attention to rather than a reason to head out to the theater.

A disclaimer of sorts: I've never seen the original "Road House," mostly being aware of its existence thanks to it being the favorite movie of Crow T. Robot from "Mystery Science Theatre 3000." I considered whether I should see the critically derided but audience-approved action film before the remake for the purposes of comparison, but ultimately decided that as a remake, this new movie should be able to stand on its own and be judged accordingly on its own merits. It's not like this is one of those reboots that's secretly a stealth sequel a la "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off."

The strongest of this remake's merits is, as mentioned before, Jake Gyllenhaal's performance. His character, Elwood Dalton, gets introduced as the fighter nobody wants to fight, his mere presence causing opponents to forfeit. When Frankie (Jessica Williams) tries to hire him as a bouncer for her Road House bar, he rejects the offer, only taking the job after his car gets wrecked. When Dalton first has to remove some overly rowdy customers, he makes it very clear he doesn't wish to fight them — but if they do, he'll take them to the nearby hospital.

You don't need the repeated flashback sequences hinting at the eventual backstory reveal to figure out that Dalton acts so eerily jovial and restrained because he's holding back a capacity for brutality he's regretfully unleashed in the past and will have to unleash again in the face of villains threatening the Road House. He's not a deep character, but even being two-dimensional makes him more interesting than the cartoonish villains he faces — sniveling rich boy Brandt (Billy Magnussen), screaming chaotic muscle man Knox (Conor McGregor) — and the weakly defined supporting characters he's defending. The romantic subplot between Dalton and the local doctor Ellie (Daniela Melchior) proves so utterly forgettable it barely even warrants a mention.

Whatever information emerges from the ongoing lawsuit, the 2024 "Road House" feels like a movie that was greenlit for the sake of holding onto a license and was rushed through production as a result. I couldn't tell you if any dialogue was filled in through AI voiceovers like the suit alleges, but I can tell you there are a lot of obviously ADRed lines, and the tenor of much of the dialogue and acting is awkward. Characters repeat points that were already made clear before, while most of the jokes just feel off. The most annoyingly flat attempt at comic relief is a running gag trying to get ahead of the meme that this movie is "actually a Western."

Despite "Road House" supposedly getting a bigger budget in exchange for a streaming debut, the movie looks weirdly cheap. Most of the visuals are bland, and thanks to some obvious CGI, the action scenes come across as fake even with actual MMA fighters like Conor McGregor participating. There's some neat choreography in the violent bouts, but it's neither gritty enough to feel immersive nor stylized enough to be like a live-action cartoon, instead falling into an awkward in-between. In theory, the film's most memorable kill involves a guy getting eaten by a crocodile — in practice, I eventually got bored enough that I actually forgot the crocodile kill was a thing until after the movie was over.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of the 2024 "Road House" is how little reason it gives the audience to care about the fate of the Road House itself. Obviously, the family business is good and the greedy developers trying to shut it down are bad, but these seemingly surefire plot dynamics don't get dramatized effectively enough to inspire real investment. It's kind of fun when Jake Gyllenhaal's doing his thing and beating up other shirtless muscle-men, but it's fun you can have while cooking or doing laundry. Ignoring the behind-the-scenes drama, it's not a movie to get angry about, but it's a movie that barely exists.

"Road House" premieres on Prime Video on March 21.