Road House (2024)
2024
R
121 Minutes
Ex-UFC fighter Dalton takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.
User Review
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Some B-movies find that their stories, aura and spirit work better when they go all in on the absurdity and throw all manner of common sense out the window. And then you get a film like the “Road House” remake that abruptly goes full-throttle Looney Tunes from the first second onwards, it might give you a heart attack from sheer aggravation.
What is it with the split for this movie, guys? It’s not that special.
Looney Tunes was probably the intended result Doug Liman was asked for or was trying to achieve from the offset here because he approaches every scene like a Fast and Furious inspired romp: lively and frenetic but also rigid and flimsy. And his direction embodies the latter half of that equation more with its forgery ardor and lack of attractiveness.
Tolerable is the best I can describe the cinematography here; it’s basic in its purest form and it does its job but only really comes alive during the litany of repetitive fight scenes. Anything else beyond that, you have to deal with the middling framework and editing that feels haphazard upon rewatch also leaning into how uninspired the production design is; it honestly feels like a wasted opportunity. Most of the locations used here lacks a unique look or coherent geometry to where it never feels like a place people would want to go to (maybe that was supposed to be the point) but the biggest detriment to that is we don’t get the feeling that the Road House or the area in general improves. The Road House itself is barely used.
Fight scenes are fine but the choreography is nothing special and momentum is lacking, CG and visual effects are nothing short of irritating when you notice them, its idea of comedy gets weirdly unserious in too many disjointed bursts and when you link all those uninspired technical elements together with a presentation designed to ample along at its own carefree, leisurely pace regardless of what happens, it just gets annoying after a while. If this was any other 80’s throwback flick, I could get behind it.
And the music itself is fine, all things considered; Christophe Beck’s actual scoring is generic as all hell and the sound mixing is a little bit strange though.
Honestly, this might just be the most punchable lot of characters I’ve seen in a while. Every cast member feels like dead clones of clones sleepwalking through 15 doses of NyQuil mostly due to the stiff dialogue they have to work with, the only exception being Conor McGregor’s hammy, unhinged naked ass and his stupid walk……but he does end up being the best part of this entire experience for how many laughs he gave me, low a bar as that is.
Right off the bat, the one thing, if not THE ONLY THING this story has going in its favor is how it aims for this self-serious yet simultaneously very silly modern day riff on Westerns; it tells you upfront it’s meant to be a joke that bats for the fence; at least, that’s what it’s aiming for. But it’s tone sure as hell doesn’t feel like that. So much of this structure carries hints of the unironic, crassly silly pantomime of the 1989 original but it’s either awkwardly hemmed together to balance past and present styles or dumbed way the hell down to accommodate the modern gaze and that lack of cohesion only makes the absence of watertight plotting that much more obvious. But the sick thing is the first twenty-five minutes to a half hour are actually decent: an undulated, uncomplicated set-up that introduces our main character and the emotional stakes he goes through while slowly opening up the world to him again.
Then it completely guts all that focus into a narrative that lacks any collective shred of depth or credibility and the tiny threads of a story that it does have are unforgivably weak at best and non-existent at worst. And if the remake isn’t patching problems from the original, it’s sprouting up and buoying two or three more in its place: having no interesting character dynamics involved, bringing up intriguing side plots only to flat out abort them three seconds later, bluntly stifling its own premise in exchange for repetitive fist fights. I didn’t dissect any shred of personality throughout this entire drivel; not only can it not decide what it wants to be, it can’t properly play off of those feelings because it’s so unsure of what identity it wants to embrace despite regurgitating cliches from decades past. All we get is a never-ending vortex of boredom and confusion that elicits more eye-rolls than emotional engagement.
It’s such a bloody chore to sit through.
I’d really like to know how the pitch meeting for this film went down because I’m convinced the writers and the executives were out drunk on the Florida Keys and decided to base the entire premise of the remake off a random coin toss. It’s like everyone in front of and behind the camera were trying to make two different kinds of experiences and they never come together. So they tired to hire a veteran who seemed skilled enough to balance out the two.
Needless to say, it didn’t work that well. It just ends up being a time waster failing to do even the bare minimum.0 member like this review.
