When making remakes that nobody asked for, Hollywood became Michael Jordan in the 1997 season. For you, LeBron James fans in the audience, think of Hollywood as that one time Kyrie Irving carried the Cleveland Cavaliers to a championship. 

The 1989 film Roadhouse was an instant cult classic that continues to set the standard for what action B movies should be. The film’s premise is over the top and ridiculous when tested in the realm of realism but Roadhouse became the textbook example of a man’s man movie.

35 years later and Hollywood decides to do a modern remake with a few notable changes.  Instead of being set in a small  Town Missouri, the film is located in the Florida Keys. Instead of the character of Dalton being a world-famous bouncer, he’s a former UFC fighter.  Instead of putting the film inbmovie theaters, the suits at Amazon decided to make this an Amazon Prime exclusive, upsetting quite a few people who assumed this movie was getting a theatrical release.

When you’re already causing multiple lawsuits and upsetting fans of the original before the movie even sees the light of day you’re not off to a good start.  However, fans of the original movie I can safely say that the remake of Roadhouse is a fun film.

In the 2024 reboot of Road House, Elwood Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a former UFC middleweight fighter who makes a living scamming fighters on the underground circuit. He is approached by a black woman named Frankie (Jessica Williams), who is the owner of an unruly roadhouse in the Florida Keys. After a failed suicide attempt, Dalton takes up the offer to clean up the roadhouse and takes a coach bus to the Florida Keys. 

As Dalton begins to integrate himself with the locals, he realizes that he has been placed in the middle of a property War between Frankie and a local mafia boss, Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen). Brandt wants to take control of the Roadhouse so that he can knock it down to develop property in the area. Because Frankie refuses to leave, Brandt sends a group of thugs to terrorize The Roadhouse until Dalton steps in the way of his plans.

Realizing that the former fighter is a lot tougher than his paid Goons, Ben has to prove to the criminal underworld including his father that he is competent enough to handle the job at hand. His father doesn’t think he can get the job done so he decides to send him a little backup for insurance.

A lot of work was put into this film to make it work on a realistic level. Last year,  Amazon managed to film a few scenes for the movie during a UFC pay-per-view week meaning that the Octagon scenes were filmed in front of a live crowd rather than going a CGI or Studio route.  Playing off of the popularity of MMA,  Roadhouse decides to insert former featherweight and lightweight champion Conor McGregor into the fold making his cinematic debut.  When it comes to Connor’s performance in the film,  McGregor comes off as deranged and over-the-top cartoonish however when just supposed to be his real life there isn’t that big of a difference between the two and he does provide an intimidating presence in the movie.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a depressed former fighter who went too far in his last fight and ended up severely injuring an old friend of his as a result of being disgraced from the MMA community,  he wanders around looking for trouble to make a couple of bucks.

Gyllenhaal who’s a solid actor plays a more stoic version of Dalton in this movie that doesn’t require him to display a lot of emotions but his dry humor works very well in a comedic sense for portions of the film. One of the toughest things to bring to the life of Roadhouse is trying to do a film that was very much a product of the era that you came from. The original film came out at a time when audiences loved over-the-top schlocky films that didn’t have to be ultra-realistic, which is a flaw for the 2024 film because there are aspects that don’t work in a modern realistic setting.

The film does its best job at portraying 1980-style movie thugs in a 2024 setting as they can. Some of the supporting characters are far better than others. Daniela Melchior Is a major waste for the film as they try to build her up to be Dalton’s love interest but that storyline goes next to Nowhere. Jessica Williams Known for her work on The Daily Show is a complete and total miscast as the role of Frankie as her character has no presence on screen to match the Rashtag bar owner from the original movie. 

The only thing that saves this film is the screen presence of Conor McGregor and the witty style of Jake Gyllenhaal as the two leads. Gyllenhaal is talented enough to make the best out of what he has given and McGregor’s presence as an absolute maniac keeps the film engaging for the audience throughout. When it comes to the 2024 Roadhouse film,  if you’re looking for a fun film to watch on a weekend the movie feels that void but the question needs to be asked of why Hollywood decided to remake this movie in the first place.

2024 Roadhouse is a film that would have been far better off as a standalone movie than a remake of an absolute classic. 

2.5/5

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