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I always reserve judgement on making an opinion on a movie before I see first look footage. I might have jumped the gun with the Doug Liman helmed reimagining of Patrick Swayze’s iconic 80’s guilty pleasure Road House which sees Jake Gyllenhaal stepping into the much hard to fill shoes as Dalton, A disgraced former MMA champ who takes over the thankless job of cooler at a hellhole of a bar in paradise. Gyllenhaal certainly went all in for the role, transforming himself into a veritable fighting machine and it looks like it may have paid off.
Amazon MGM Studios has just unloaded the first trailer for this generation’s remake of Road House which sees Gyllenhaal rising up to pummel no luck hooligans into submission with some very hard-edged MMA moves. One difference between Gyllenhaal’s Dalton as opposed to Swayze’s is that his take seems to be a little more sarcastic then philosophical. There will never be another Swayze and another 80’s gut punch of a movie, but it looks like Gyllenhaal has made the character his own and if we do not compare it to the original, then we may just like it for what it has to offer.
Check out the newly released trailer below!
“In this adrenaline-fueled reimagining of the ’80s cult classic, ex-UFC fighter Dalton (Gyllenhaal) takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.”
From the trailer, the movie looks fun, brutal and the set pieces look bigger and more thunderous as there appears to be a huge battle in the ocean. The infusion of MMA for the throwdowns is a nice touch as that is where we are with fight flicks these days plus it’ll make this version stand out from the Swayze film. The punches and kicks definitely feel harder and more pronounced judging from the footage, and I’m intrigued.
Conor McGregor, who plays the heavy this time to Gyllenhaal looks to be having one huge ass thrill a minute playing the bad guy and it stands to mention that their climatic altercation will surely be one that fans will be looking at. After all, Swayze’s brawl with Marshall Teague is considered one of the best movie fights ever. The new sequence looks amped up to say the least with Gyllenhaal and McGregor serving up some blunt force fight choreography to satisfy the masses so we shall see.
Before the trailer was released, director Doug Liman issued a statement that he will be boycotting the movie’s premiere when it hits the SXSW film festival. It’s not because he feels the film is bad but quite the contrary as he is dismayed that Amazon MGM has forgone a theatrical release and has been relegated to a streaming one. Liman signed on to do the film as he thought it would be shown in cinemas on the big screen, but he feels betrayed as he is proud of the project.
“Contrary to their public statements, Amazon has no interest in supporting cinemas,” Liman said. “Amazon will exclusively stream Road House on Amazon Prime. Amazon asked me and the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas, and then they turned around and are using Road House to sell plumbing fixtures,” Liman said in his official statement.
I agree with Liman as 2024 is going to be a bare minimum 12 months for cinema because of the writer and actor strikes last year. Road House would definitely benefit from being viewed in IMAX with the best sound and visuals possible. It’s a moot point however and we will have to watch on our big screens at home so turn up the volume action fans.
Road House hits Amazon Prime on March 21st so get ready to take it outside and at least watch the friggin’ movie first before you butcher it on my social media.
