Kickin' Ass and Rippin' Throats

The 1980s were a weird time, especially when it came to action films. There a certain sweaty, muscled, over-the-top, heightened aesthetic that caught on with audiences of the 1990s. Big men doing big men things wherever they go, all while crotch rock plays in the background and bullets fly everywhere. Every bad guy was a yuppie terrorist and every good guy was rippling with meat and ready to beat some skulls. It didn't matter who they were, or what they were doing, the 1980s knew how to film their action.

Road House is a film that very much fits into that motif. It's about a bouncer who goes to the worst places, real dive bars and similar establishments, all so you can fight the bad guys and save the club. This is his career, as improbable as it sounds that there are enough bars in this kind of trouble to warrant a man with this particular set of skills. And yet Road House never questions it. It's here for the rock, the muscles, and the big dumb action. That's what action movies in the 1980s were all about.

The movie stars Patrick Swayze as James Dalton, our bouncer and fixer, who gets hired by Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to head to Jasper, Missouri, and take over operations on the Double Deuce. Tilghman's bar is struggling, hardly managing to make ends meet, and Dalton is needed to find all the issues and get the bar back on track. That would be fine on its own, a standard business operation, except that many of Dalton's solutions involve his fists. But then, that's required when a whole lot of shady grifters and thieves have worked their way into the bar's operations.

Once Dalton cleans up the staff and gets things rolling, that's when the real villain reveals himself: Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), local business magnate who feels like Jasper is his town and he can run it any way he sees fit. Dalton and Jasper butt heads more than once, largely because Dalton was hired to do a job and he doesn't like shady people sticking their noses where they don't belong. Soon blood is spilled, bodies start dropping, and Dalton finds himself in a world of shit. Only with his fists, his feet, and then occasional throat rip, can Dalton save the Double Deuce, and Jasper as well.

Road House, let's be clear, is a deeply silly movie. It doesn't think it's a silly movie, mind you; it plays everything very, very straight. Dalton is presented as the only hope for Jasper, MO, and everyone he meets either gets on board or gets dead. The film never pokes fun at its own concepts, never hangs a hat on what it's doing. No, straight up Dalton is the action hero and everyone had to get on board or get out of his way. It's pure, straight-faced, action cheese.

Cheese it is, though, because the very concept is just ridiculous. A lone stranger, quiet spoken but with powerful fighting prowess, is the only guy that can fix bars across the country because that's a thing that needs doing. And, to correct that, he's not the only one because he was trained by Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott), and Garrett is the only other man that can, apparently, solve this particular recurring problem for all bars across the nation. Seriously, this is something that happens, and instead of Dalton saying, "wait, you have a criminal underworld trying to run your shitty little bar?" he just acts like it's another day in the office. What the hell is this?

I think that strange dichotomy, the straight-faced presentation of the story up against the almost parodic plot, is part of the film's charm. With a comedian in the lead role this film would have been a parody of everything the 1980s action genre stood for. "We've had cops and soldiers and knights and patriots, and they all are greases up like a plate of bacon and eggs, rippling with more abs than all the American Gladiators combined, and they can kick ass. So why not a bouncer? He's a manly man, right?"And then the film commits. It's so stupid and gloriously over-the-top, and the film just goes with it, much like Dalton. It's just another day in Jasper, MO.

Helping to sell this ridiculousness was Swayze. A trained dancer (and multi-hyphenate), Swayze was on a string of action films at this point in his career, from Red Dawn to Steel Dawn and then, eventually, Point Break. If you notice a trend in all those films it's that they are not just normal action movies; there's always something strange, some heightened sense of reality. And when you combine that with roles in films like Dirty Dancing and Ghost, you get the vibe that Swayze wasn't interested in standard leading men roles for his era.

That's good because, to sell Dalton, Swayze had to bring everything he had to the role. He had to be able to sell the cool and collected bouncer who could also fight and kill and dance. He had to be all kinds of weird things, sold with a straight face, and Swayze was frankly the perfect man for the job. The movie is dumb but Swayze never acts like it. He never winks to the camera or lets the persona slip. Unlike other action heroes, Swayze's Dalton wasn't always ready with a quip; after ripping out a dude's throat, there's no line like, "cat got your tongue?" Swayze gave Dalton gravitas and that's the only thing that keeps this film on track.

Frankly, for an action film the action in Road House isn't that great. There are a few decent fist fight, and a big climactic gun fight / brawl, but for the most part the action scenes are quick and dirty and very silly. It's like everything in this film, outside of Swayze: silly. You can't really get invested in the action because it never seems believable. It's never grounded in any kind of reality because Jasper, MO, just doesn't seem like a real place here. It's heightened and weird and run by a criminal that really should have gone to jail long ago despite what the film tells us. It's all so stupid.

But because of Swayze it works. The action (with help from the equally grounded, and fun to watch, Elliott), makes the film work. He wears Road House around him and makes it his own. Without him this film wouldn't be anywhere near as watchable as it is. The film it brash, and dumb, and really, really stupid, but even now, 35 years after its release, it's still a cheesy good time. You can't expect reality, or grounded action, or anything like that. Just watch Road House so you can see Swayze be cool and rip throats. If that's all you need then Road House will deliver.