Jake Gyllenhaal’s latest movie is Road House. It is a remake of the 1989 movie named Road House, which I have not seen. I saw this movie only because of Jake Gyllenhaal. His choices are always unique and I haven’t been disappointed by any of his movies before. There is almost always something to admire in his movies, especially his performance. He gives his everything in every movie he is in. So naturally, I watched Roadhouse, and it is… a good time overall. Just don’t expect a coherent story that builds up its characters and ultimately provides a satisfying ending. I don’t think the movie is strong enough to stick in your brain after you finish watching it.
Let’s discuss the movie a bit. I didn’t think the technical aspects of this movie would be a problem for me, but the audio design in this movie is odd. I mean it’s not that apparent but the loudness of the dialogues and the mouth movement of the characters don’t match, especially in outdoor, noisy scenes. And this movie looks really dark and grim for a fun action movie. It just feels odd.
The main thing of course is the lack of any satisfying conclusions to the storylines it introduces. This movie sets up Jake’s character as this badass fighter with anger management issues. That he is afraid of himself when he loses control over himself; like he is an animal, this goes nowhere. He is also shown to be without a family and suicidal but I thought they would explore him accepting the People of the new town he moves to defend “The Roadhouse” and finally finding happiness there. These are all kinds of subplots that could have been designed to make the viewing rewarding and satisfying, But the movie abandons every bit of set up it had to make room for boat chase scenes, explosions and Conor McGregor.
This could have been a standard “Hero goes to a new town, finds trouble, solves it via some spectacular violence and during all this he rediscovers his purpose”. It could have been really emotionally effective. But they chose to shift their focus to the cool stuff more than the story. And the boat chase scene in the end wasn’t even that memorable.
Now, I have been talking about what this movie could have been. But the question is “Is it enjoyable as it is?”. Yeah, I guess it is to some degree.
If I talk about the positives here; Both Jake and Conner’s performances keep this movie interesting and fun to watch. The hand-to-hand combat sequences are good.
I had fun watching it. It is not Really Bad or Really Good. It’s fun, just don’t expect a deep pool of nuance and subtext to dive into or even decent character development for that matter.
Thank you!
