The new “Bouncer” is now available on Prime Video! “Road House” directed by Doug Liman is one of our most anticipated films this year (the list of films we are waiting for in 2024 can be found here: The most anticipated films of 2024. Top 26 films according to the Filmweb editorial team). This time, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the main role and, as we read in Bartek Czartoryski’s review, he does it really well.
A fragment of the review of “Road House” can be found below, and the entire review can be found on the film card AT THE LINK HERE.
Review of the film “Road House”, dir. Doug Liman
The inn has a black eye
author: Bartosz Czartoryski
Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is close to being considered a Zen master. When hell breaks loose behind his back, he utters philosophical bon mots over a calmly drinking cup of coffee. According to him, no battle can end in victory, because even joining it means defeat. However, he himself does not feel any resistance to using arguments that are more emphatic than verbal ones.
He is a real bad Samaritan with a six-pack on his belly who – almost to paraphrase the memorable scene from Akira Kurosawa’s “Redbeard” – breaks people’s bones in order to then personally take them to the hospital. Gyllenhaal, like Swayze in the original “Bouncers”, is a stoic brute constantly balancing on the verge of small-town normality and sociopathic madness, juggling a dove heart full of sincere kindness and a poorly hidden passion for harm. When Dalton is hired to guard a Florida diner where people don’t dance to music but just get drunk, he finally finds an equal. He inevitably sees the freak played by Conor McGregor as a degenerate version of himself, the personification of a worst-case scenario: what would happen if his brakes were released.
In the past, a text eagerly quoted by local toughs was popular in neighborhood yards, and recalled years later by Mariusz Pudzianowski: “My left hand is death, and I’m afraid of my right hand.” Dalton has a tendency to violence and has to be careful not to accidentally lose his head, which happened to him once and ruined his life. This old-school wisdom fits here like a glove. At the same time, it captures the unpretentious, almost cassette-like atmosphere of the film. Director Doug Liman does not try to turn “Road House” into a nostalgic trip, he does not photocopy the original, he only takes roughly its plot skeleton. “Road House” is a modern action house. However, its half-intentional naivety, demonstrative pugnacity and abandonment of meaning for the sake of spectacle place it somewhere among the lesser classics of the genre. Those that were taken from the rental store as a third film – this one was added for free or for a symbolic zloty. From time to time, there is an followingimage of some ambition, a desire to define one of the characters more deeply or to outline a broader context. But when he’s regarding to do something, Liman seems to remember where he is and what he’s filming, he breaks his pen on his knee and reaches for his brass knuckles. Basically, nothing matters here except setting up further fights. But I won’t be the one to cast the first stone.
You can read the entire review of “Road House” at the link on the film card.
