Why Are Road House Customers So Brawl-Happy? And Other Burning Qs About Amazon’s Movie Remake
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The following contains full spoilers for Road House, now streaming on Prime Video.
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Prime Video this week invited you back to the Road House, with a straight-to-streaming remake of the 1989 cult classic that starred the late Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott and, sure, Kelly Lynch.
This Road House stars a rrrrrrripped Jake Gyllenhall as Elwood Dalton, a former UFC fighter who gets recruited by Frankie (Jessica Williams) to be the head bouncer at the Florida Keys watering hole she owns, which is being terrorized by a real estate developer’s assorted minions. Dalton takes the well-paying gig, and when not slipping away for romance on a sand bar with ER doc Ellie (Daniela Melchior), he gets into a steady stream of scuffles, ultimately squaring off with a swole enforcer named Knox (former UFC champ Conor McGregor).
If you fired up Road House this weekend, you can grade it down below — after you browse through the many questions the Doug Liman-directed action movie left us with. Such as….
1 | Why are Road House customers so eager to join in a bar brawl? We “get” why Dell and the biker gang, and later Knox, made mayhem, but most everyone else in the bar at any given moment seemed to be spoiling for a fight at the drop of a hat, almost randomly slugging the person closest to them! I mean, The Road House — with its thatched roof and tropical motif — isn’t the sort of dark, seedy watering hole where bar fights break out; it looks more like a family-friendly cantina at a Disney park.
2 | Since the closest hospital is 25 minutes away, should ER doc Ellie consider opening up an urgent care clinic much closer to The Road House — maybe share a space/rent with Charlie and her dad’s book store? Seems like she’d make bank.
3 | Am I right that we saw a different band play at The Road House every single night? Does that seem… improbable, given the remoteness of the Keys? Wouldn’t one or two local bands have a standing gig? Or do groups perhaps cruise up and down each Key, booking gigs? (Maybe this is why the locals get so punchy, because a band they like rarely returns!)
4 | What was the movie’s most “Oh, it’s ____!” casting? Mayans MC‘s J.D. Pardo as Dell? The Suicide Squad‘s Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior) as Ellie? The daughter from Special Ops: Lioness (Hannah Lanier) as Charlie? TikTok dancer Miranda Derrick and her husband James in that one random Road House cutaway? Or The Last Ship‘s Travis Van Winkle as Ellie’s blink-and-you-missed-him lawman ex?
5 | How ridiculous a display of… whatever it was meant to be a display of… was Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen) insisting on getting a straight-razor shave on the deck of a catamaran on choppy waters?
6 | Speaking of Ben: What was “vodka, neat” supposed to signal as a Big Bad’s drink order? Seeing as it’s just a splash of Ocean Spray away from being a Cape Cod?
7 | Why was Ben’s notorious, imprisoned dad always conspicuously off-screen? Saving him/the casting of the role for a possible sequel?
8 | Why was Dalton overcome with murderous rage when fighting his friend in the fateful UFC match that to this day haunts him? Speaking of….
9 | I admittedly know nothing about the sport/organization, but is anyone surprised that the UFC lent their name/signage to a movie about a fighter who killed an opponent in a murderous rage?
10 | Exactly how much cash is The Road House taking in that Frankie can effortlessly pay Dalton $5K a week? On that premium, coveted waterfront property? And with a total staff of at least six (that we saw), but probably several more?
11 | Are “boat dreams” (i.e. having strange dreams when sleeping on a boat) actually a thing? (Google suggests no.)
12 | When Dalton confronted Frankie in her office about what was really going on in Glass Key, did anyone else fear we’d learn that she was running drugs out of the roadhouse and had in fact hired him to scare off her competition?
13 | Any time you caught sight of the heavy’s “Knox Knox Knox” stomach tattoo, did you picture Sheldon Cooper outside Penny’s door?
14 | How is “Big Dick” the sheriff planning to cover up Dalton’s role in the super-deadly final melee?
15 | As nice as Dalton’s parting “gift” to the book shop was, what difficulty will Charlie’s dad encounter trying to use that cash-of-unknown origin for rebuilding? (And did Dalton save any of that ill-gotten cash to reimburse Ellie’s ex-boyfriend for the speedboat he blew up? Or does insurance cover such a thing?)
16 | Did Dalton at least defer his final payday from Frankie, seeing as both a boat and a pickup truck had crashed into The Road House? (Or does insurance cover such a thing?)
17 | Given that, as revealed in a mid-credits scene, Knox survived the multiple stabbings, should we count on Road House II?
What questions did Road House leave you with? Plus, grade the movie remake below.
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