On R List of Movie Reviews
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Road House (1989)
Rate:
7
Viewed:
6/10, 8/18
6/10:
Road House is an easy target as one of the cheesiest films from the 80's, but if given the chance,
it's actually a decent show with high replayability value.
Patrick Swayze is entertaining, and his looks have always been handsome in an unusual way. Hence, he's easy to watch, and pretty
much all of his films are the same way as well. His character is a walking contradiction because he practices tai chi
yet chain-smokes incessantly.
The trouble with Road House is the running length. It starts off well and has an okay finish but loses momentum in
the middle. The reason is that there are too many fights. Plus, it's hard for me to believe nobody has a gun for the longest time.
Dalton would've been finished much earlier unless he had a gun, too.
Doc is a strange gal. At first, she was repulsed by Dalton killing a man, which was actually justified in the name of
self-defense, and wanted him to stay away from her. After he put the archvillain away for good with the help of several
locals, she happily came running to him. Uh, okay...mucho hypocrite? Of course, it's also weird that Dalton rents a room
right across the lake from where Brad Wesley's house is located.
All in all, Road House is an enjoyable movie if you try not to read too much into it.
8/18:
Road House is a fun "don't think too much about it" flick starring Patrick Swayze as the cooler-manager of
bouncers at a rowdy bar in the middle of nowhere.
Fights happen on a nightly basis, and bouncers get beaten up while escorting instigators out of the bar. It's truly hard
to believe guns don't exist for a long time until the end. Although I like Patrick Swayze's character who has a good
approach in terms of defusing situations, I hate the fact that he has to smoke so much. It's just contradictory given that
he graduated from NYU with a major in philosophy and practices tai chi. Other than that, he's fun to watch. So is the movie
although it runs a bit long.
Ben Gazzara plays an evil guy, but after a while, questions start to come up. Eventually, because he's been exposed for too long,
his character becomes one-dimensional. I was more curious about his relationship to Jimmy (Marshall Teague) and whether they
were father-son or gay lovers. This part has never been made clear to me. Sam Elliott's appearance as Wade Garrett is a strange
one. He's kind of corny, but whatever. Sam Elliott has claimed in interviews that his role in Road House is what he's
recognized for the most. I have to agree with his assessment because he's barely in anything else as far as I'm concerned.
As often as I've seen the film, I didn't realize Jeff Healey was both legitimately blind and an accomplished
musician. He, having passed away in 2008 from sarcoma cancer at age 41, lost his sight to retinoblastoma which is a rare
cancer of the eyes, and his eyes were surgically removed and replaced with ocular prostheses. Interestingly, because of his
knee injury during filming, Patrick Swayze had to turn down Tango & Cash and
Predator 2, opting for easier work which turned out to be
Ghost that obviously made his career again post-Dirty Dancing.
All in all, Road House has been routinely voted as one of the worst and cheesiest films made, but that's ridiculous because
it's a good movie.