Fight Clip Club: Road House

Oh. I just slapped you. Are you all right?

When I first heard that someone was remaking beloved bar brawl flick Road House, I groaned the groan of many a Gen Xer before me: Why are they going to ruin perfection? Were the fights in the Patrick Swayze original too slow, too theatrical, and cheesily overlaid with so much breaking-glass foley that if one attempts to play the drinking game, one is in danger of hospitalization? Sure. Is the acting a wide range between hot cheese and blithely bad? I mean, yeah. But that’s what makes the 1989 classic such a… well, classic! How could they ever improve on it? How dare they?

Then I saw they’d cast Conor MacGregor in the Marshall R. Teague bad guy role, and I rolled my eyes. An actual UFC fighter, not an actor? Especially *that* one? Sigh…but at least Jake Gyllenhall has undergone some serious training himself, both for this remake and for previous movies, so. Ehhh. Still though. Why?

Then I saw the trailer. I knew I had to watch the whole thing, then—they’d added a much more diverse cast, which I appreciated, and it looked like a couple Miami Vice nods? Which could be awful, but then I’ve recently rewatched some old Miami Vice episodes and they’re grand, just grand. So maybe, just maybe…?

Well, readers, I saw it. And I have to say, as much as I was ready to be super-critical of a movie that had the audacity to redo an ‘80s favorite? 

…

I loved it.