“Road House,” the 2024 Prime Video riff on the much-loved 1989 cult classic of the same name, isn’t so much a remake of the Patrick Swayze flick, but a modern tribute to the cartoon violence of 1980s movies.
Jake Gyllenhaal is Elwood Dalton, a disgraced UFC fighter with a troubled past and an even more troubling left hook. A one-man army, he is a soft-spoken bruiser who usually gives his victims the chance to turn tail and run before he pummels the hell out of them. “Before we start,” he asks, “do you have insurance? Is your coverage good? Like, you have dental?”
After a self-inflicted near-death experience, he finds himself working as a bouncer at the Road House in the picturesque Glass Key, Florida. Brought in by second generation owner Frankie (Jessica Williams), it’s his job to bring order back to the place, even if that means busting a few heads.
As the fists fly, Dalton finds himself caught up in a turf war between Frankie and a rich, mobbed up local family who want to turn the Road House into a resort. When the family brings in a walking, talking wrecking crew (Conor McGregor) to seal the deal, Dalton becomes afraid… “Afraid of what happens when someone pushes me too far.”
Other than bars, bouncers and brawls, “Road House” doesn’t have much in common with the original. The previous film wasn’t exactly nuanced, but at least they took the time to give the bar, the Double Deuce, a name. Here it’s just called Road House. It’s a small detail, and they joke about it in a self-aware way in the film, but it signals a simplicity that permeates the entire, bloody affair.
Not that we can reasonably expect much depth in a movie about a bare-knuckle brawler. What you can expect is the dichotomy of Dalton as aa violent man who hates violence. Gyllenhaal plays him as an affable guy who’ll break your arm, but take the time to drive you to the hospital after the fight is done. The Tai Chi, philosophy and Ph.D. that defined Swayze’s take on the character are gone, replaced by Gyllenhaal’s wide smile and fists of fury.
His Dalton is interesting when the fists are flying—director Doug Liman has a way with staging big, fun fight scenes that mix MMA with slapstick and Russian car rash videos—but less so when he’s not in action. That is emphasized with the introduction of McGregor. With a maniacal grin, a skip to his step and an unstoppable Terminator approach to fisticuffs, his ridiculous performance is the blast of energy the movie needs after a saggy middle section.
“Road House” may disregard the original movie, but it doesn’t disregard its audience. The fight scenes, and let’s face it, that’s why we’re here, are high-octane, old-school battles that punch above their weight.
Everything about “Fast X,” the latest entry in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, is big. Really big.
The a-lister cast list is a laundry list, including returning stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Charlize Theron along with the addition of Marvel superheroes Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. The villain is faster and more furious than ever before and the action can only be described as bigly. There’s even a surprise cameo from one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
But is bigger always better?
A jumble of the usual mix of family, friends, fast cars and flashbacks, “Fast X” begins with relative calm in the world of former criminal and professional street racer Dominic Toretto (Diesel). The patriarch of the “F&F” gang, he has left the fast life behind, and retired with wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and his son Brian. “We used to live our lives a quarter mile at a time,” he says. “But things change.”
Not so fast, there Dom.
Dom’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of flamboyant villain Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the sadistic, revenge fueled son of drug lord Hernan Reyes. “I’m Dante,” he says by way of introduction. “Enchanté.”
Way back in “Fast Five” Dom and Co. were responsible for the loss of the Reyes family fortune. “The great Dominic Toretto,” Dante snarls. “If you never would’ve gotten behind that wheel, I’d never be the man I am today. And now, I’m the man who’s going to break your family, piece by piece.”
Cue the set-up to the second part of the franchise’s three-part finale. It is, as they say on the movie poster, just the beginning of the end.
In the “Fast & Furious” world the word “ludicrous” is not just the name of prominent cast member Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, it’s also the name of the game. Since the franchise’s humble 2001 debut, the movies have grown bigger and sillier with each entry. “If it can violate the laws of God and gravity,” says Agent Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in “FX,” “they do it twice.”
The latest one redefines ridiculousness.
The out-of-control car stunts that crowd the screen have no touchstone in reality, other than the cars have four wheels and drive along streets when they aren’t bursting into flames or flying through the air. It’s as if the wild car chases were dreamed up by fourteen-year-olds playing with their Hot Wheels sets as images of canon cars danced in their heads. Anything goes, and no idea is too big or too ludicrous.
When the tires aren’t squealing, Dom is whinging on about the importance of family with a straight face and a serious tone that makes Leslie Nielsen’s “Naked Gun” deadpan look positively flamboyant. Only Momoa seems to understand how colossally silly the whole thing is, and has fun pulling faces, doing a Grand Jeté or two and peacocking around as he rolls a neutron bomb through the streets of Rome. It’s a ludicrous performance in a completely ludicrous movie and it fits.
The bombastic “Fast X” is overstuffed with characters—it seems like every actor in Hollywood has a cameo—plot and, if this is possible, it is overstuffed with excess. The very definition of “go big or go home,” it is for “F&F” fans who have been along for the ride for more than two decades everyone else may want to take a detour.
“I intend to ask questions,” says detective Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) in the new gumshoe thriller “Marlowe,” now playing in theatres. And ask questions he does. This revisiting of the classic hardboiled 1930s P.I. Philip Marlowe, made famous on the big screen by Humphrey Bogart, isn’t so much a story as it is a very long series of questions strung together to tell the tale. Screenwriter William Monahan, adapting “The Black-Eyed Blonde,” a 2014 authorized Marlowe novel by Irish writer John Banville, must have burned out the “?” key on his typewriter.
Set in Hollywood, in 1939, the same year Raymond Chandler published “The Big Sleep,” his first Marlowe novel, the movie begins when Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) hires the detective to find her missing lover, Nico Petersen (François Arnaud). A prop master at one of the studios, he makes extra cash smuggling drugs into the United States in the props he imports from Mexico.
The police say Nico was killed in a hit and run outside a fancy private club, Cavendish thinks he is still alive and Marlowe has questions. Lots of questions.
When “Marlowe” isn’t in Q&A mode, it has, if nothing else, a collection of interesting characters. Jessica Lange makes an impression as a secretive former movie star who just might be her daughter’s love rival, Danny Houston redefines creepy bluster as a pimp at the upmarket Corbata Club but it is Alan Cumming who leaves a lasting impression. He is businessman, philanthropist and gangster Lou Hendricks, a chewer of scenery who delivers lines like, “I am entirely composed of tarantulas,” with the gusto of a Marvel villain.
Neeson gives the title character a world weariness that borders on ennui. In the Raymond Chandler books he is portrayed in his 30s and 40s. Neeson is 70 and, as Marlowe, is still able to take on a room full of bad guys with his fists and his wits, but he’s seen too much of the underside of life, and it has left him cynical, disengaged to the evil that men do. “I’m getting too old for this,” he says after dispatching a group of baddies, and given Neeson’s listless performance, he may be right.
“Marlowe” has the look and feel of an old time Hollywood noir, but is a pale imitation of the real thing. The golden haze that hangs over every frame can’t disguise the fact that this is a movie comprised of a series of questions with unsatisfying answers in search of a meaningful story.
