Patrick Swayze's 'Road House' shares a name, but apparently not a plot with an old Richard Widmark movie from the 40's. I felt it a bit of a shame when I found that out, the concept of a movie about the second best (you meet the best in the course of the film) club "cooler" (turns out a "cooler" is like a head "bouncer") in the business seemed a wonderfully slimy and film norish idea. But 'Road House' is really more like a western, the lead a part John Wayne might play if he were a little more cerebral; Swayze's singularly named "Dalton" is an NYU graduate who likes to read poetry in his off hours. A largely silent guy who sure knows how to fight, but will only do it when he needs to, our hero comes to town (it's in real life Jasper County, Missouri but I don't think we ever gets its name) to take a job cleaning up a troubled night spot called the Double Duce, in time he learns that both the club and wider community are under the oppressive control of a local criminal boss named Brad Wesley, played with appropriate menace by Ben Gazzara.
Dalton falls for a lovely doctor played by Kelly Lynch, and puts up for the most part with Wesley's increasingly aggressive behavior, but then the bad guy goes too far so he hits back with force, then he goes too far again and he hits back with even greater, basically unhinged force resulting in a wild and unrealistic ending that is still kind of great. Directed by the appropriately named Rowdy Herrington this is an unusual movie, and I'm not quite sure why it exists, but I'm glade that it does as it's at times wildly entertaining and enjoyably off kilter. The movie does have its bland parts, and honestly does not demand ones full viewing attention, and usually (and I know I'm a bit of an outlier here) I don't like that in a film. Still an endearingly strange concept for a main stream movie, which seems to have done decent business, making $30.1 million off a $15 million budget. Also if you watch 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' this is Crow. T. Robots favorite film. **1/2
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment