[COLUMN] The Two Versions of Road House Are a Study in Shifting Star Personas | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

NOTE: This piece includes spoilers for both versions of Road House, as much as the pleasures of either version of Road House can be spoiled by simply reading about them.

This weekend saw the release of Doug Liman’s remake of Road House, a mostly-watchable-if-unexceptional update of a mostly-watchable-if-unexceptional original.

As with almost every movie of the era, most notably Hocus Pocus, there has been an effort to reclaim Rowdy Herrington’s Road House as a beloved classic. In reality, the film opened to poor reviews and solid-but-not-spectacular box office, finding a second life on cable television into the 1990s. Doug Liman’s remake lands in a somewhat similar space. It delivers on most of what it promises, even if it suffers from a surplus of computer-generated effects and a paint-by-numbers plot. It’s the kind of movie where the villain tiredly sighs “I’ll just destroy the fucking Road House myself” as the movie barrels into its third act.

However, there is a cynicism underpinning the decision to remake Road House. Have the intellectual property mines run so dry that a middling cable classic is fodder for reinvention? Is Amazon so eager to wring some value from the MGM and United Artists’ library that Road House merited a revisit? However, Liman’s Road House is most interesting as a remake, as a study in the similarities and the contrasts between a fairly mediocre action movie from 1989 and a fairly mediocre action movie from 2024.

On a purely superficial level, for example, it is remarkable how well 1980s movie villains translate to the current moment. In the original Road House, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) is a local businessman who extorts protection money from the local community as he gentrifies it. “When I came to this town after Korea there was nothing,” he boasts. “I brought the mall here. I got the 7-EIeven. I got the Photomat here. Christ, JC Penney is coming here because of me.”

In the remake, the eponymous roadside bar is threatened by a sinister property developer, Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen). Brandt is attempting to buy the venue so that he can tear it down and build a tacky resort. Given that Liman shifted the movie’s setting from Missouri to Florida, there is a none-too-subtle piece of political commentary there. However, it’s also just a loving homage to the sort of yuppie villains that populated the action movies of the 1980s.

Still, the most interesting aspect of the remake is how it underscores the most compelling part of the original. Herrington’s Road House is rightly remembered as a showcase for Patrick Swayze, who played the tough-as-nails bouncer Dalton. Liman’s Road House casts Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role. While the character remains largely consistent in terms of how they are written, with a slight shift in back story to cash in on the popularity of UFC, the performances are very different.

This is fascinating, because it demonstrates the extent to which Swayze was – and remains – a singular leading man. It’s very hard to imagine remaking any of Swayze’s movies, because Swayze was such a unique presence and that presence was so central to the appeal of those movies. After all, with all due respect to Havana Nights, the theatrical Dirty Dancing sequel that was due this year has yet to materialize, with its release currently scheduled for next summer.

This isn’t the case with every leading man. It’s quite easy to imagine remaking an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, because there are still plenty of male leads cast in his image. Jason Momoa attempted to take up the mantle in Conan the Barbarian, a movie that even Momoa has since acknowledged was “a big pile of shit.” Schwarzenegger even made a small cameo in The Rundown to pass the torch to Dwayne Johnson, telling him to “have fun.”

None of these replacements can credibly claim to have succeeded Schwarzenegger, but the point is that there are leading men who operate in that same space. In contrast, Swayze remains something of an oddity. This is particularly notable, because Swayze emerged during the same era that produced action stars like Schwarzenegger, along with other muscled figures like Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and even Chuck Norris.

Schwarzenegger embodied a certain stereotypical idea of masculinity, “Charles Atlas as a cartoon character brought to life.” In 1993, Susan Jeffords codified the archetype typified by Schwarzenegger or Stallone as Hard Bodies, describing these physical specimens as “one of the key images that came to embody the political, economic, and social philosophy of the 1980s.” Even contemporary press acknowledged the trend, describing them as “characters made for adolescent males.”

Swayze offered a much more nuanced and sophisticated masculine ideal. In many ways, Swayze spoke to a very conventional notion of manliness. He was a literal cowboy, having grown up on the Texas Rodeo scene. He was in prime physical condition. He was trained in martial arts, studying aikido, taekwondo, and kung-fu, among other disciplines. He also played sports, only becoming an actor because of a knee injury sustained during the second-to-last football game of his senior year.

However, Swayze complicated that very traditional model of masculinity by demonstrating a vulnerability that ran counter to the screen personas of stars like Schwarzenegger and Stallone. He was a literal ballet dancer, studying with his mother in Texas, before enrolling at the Joffrey and Harkness ballet schools in New York and then performing with the Eliot Feld ballet. He was capable of being tender and delicate, gentle and introspective.

Swayze’s defining movie star moment might exist outside any of his films. In 1988, a year before Road House, he was interviewed by Barbara Walters. Talking about the loss of his father, he allowed himself to cry on national television. “The moment that Patrick became a star was when he did the Barbara Walters show, not when he did Dirty Dancing,” his agent Nicole David would later concede. At a time when men on screen were becoming tougher and harder, Swayze dared to show a soft side.

Herrington’s Road House understands this. It is a movie tailor-made for Swayze, built around what makes him different from his contemporaries. Repeatedly throughout the film, characters size Dalton up and concede that they expected him to be “bigger.” The bar’s old bouncer, Morgan (Terry Funk), opines, “I heard you had balls big enough to come in a dump truck, but you don't look like much to me.” In his first meeting of staff, Dalton instructs the other bouncers to “be nice.”

Dalton, it seems, is a philosopher. He studied “man’s search for faith, that sort of shit” at New York University. He doesn’t have anything to prove. In the movie’s opening scenes, he asks a drunk (Joey Plewa) who just stabbed him and who is itching for a fight to step “outside”, only to walk the man off the premises and then disappear back into the bar. Dalton is haunted by a traumatic event from his own past, having killed a man in self-defense.

As played by Swayze, Dalton seems genuinely remorseful. Indeed, the character of Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott), another veteran bouncer and Dalton’s closest friend, seems to exist largely to push Dalton towards conflict – to tell Dalton to forgive himself and to convince him of the necessity of employing violence against Wesley - because Dalton cannot do that himself. Swayze brings a genuine calm and serenity to Dalton, playing a character who seems like he is truly at peace.

Facets of Swayze’s screen persona survive into the modern wave of leading men. Younger male leads like Robert Pattinson and Timothée Chalamet – the “softboys” – are much more delicate and vulnerable on-screen than their predecessors, even if they lack Swayze’s more rugged qualities. At the other end of the spectrum, the modern muscled men – like Dave Bautista, John Cena, and Jason Momoa – are more comfortable demonstrating interiority, but they still look rough and ready.

Ryan Gosling might come close to tapping into what made Swayze unique. Like Swayze, Gosling is the rare male lead who manages to embody a very archetypal masculine ideal while also seeming very comfortable supporting his female co-stars. Gosling isn’t afraid to be emotionally naked on screen. However, Gosling’s most recent films tend to couch that vulnerability in comedy, in films like The Nice Guys, Barbie, and The Fall Guy. In contrast, Swayze was more consistently sincere.

Doug Liman’s Road House remake is shrewd enough to avoid chasing the ghost of Swayze’s central performance. Swayze’s work was both the best thing about the original movie and something that would be impossible to replicate. While Herrington’s Road House is far from a classic, Swayze’s performance remains a highlight of 1980s action cinema. Instead, Liman recognized that Swayze’s unique energy was essential to Road House, and so sought a star with a similarly powerful (but distinct) persona.

As such, the decision to cast Gyllenhaal as Dalton fundamentally alters the core character dynamics of Liman’s Road House. Once again, Dalton is a drifter who has sworn himself to (relative) pacifism after taking a life. Most of the broad strokes remain the same, even if the finer details have been slightly updated. This time around, Dalton killed his friend (Jay Hieron) during a UFC fight. This version of Dalton may not have a college degree, but he’s still philosophical.

However, Gyllenhaal doesn’t share Swayze’s vulnerability and serenity. Instead, Gyllenhaal’s screen persona is largely built around the sense that there’s something deeply troubled stirring beneath the surface. This uneasiness is central to so many of Gyllenhaal’s most memorable performances: Donnie Darko, Nightcrawler, Enemy. While Swayze’s version of Dalton seems like he really does not want to hurt anybody, Gyllenhaal’s take on the character simply seems to want to feel justified in doing so.

While Swayze’s Dalton lures aggressors outside only to retreat back into the bar, Gyllenhaal’s Dalton follows through. He might make sure he knows where the hospital is and will drive his opponents there afterwards, but he throws down. “You don’t have to do this,” Deputy Harrison (CJ Báez) begs late in the film. “Oh, I wish I didn’t,” Dalton replies. “But I’m angry. It takes a lot to get me angry, but – when I am – I just can’t let go. I wish I could, but… your boss and Brandt really pissed me off.” However, the way that Gyllenhaal plays the scene suggests that maybe Dalton doesn’t really wish that he could “let it go.”

If Swayze’s version of Dalton was a monk, then Gyllenhaal’s take on the character is a ticking time bomb. This version of the story has no need for a character like Wade Garrett to argue for action and violence. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton can get there entirely on his own. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton receives an early establishing character moment as he contemplates suicide, driving his car on to a railroad crossing, only to relent at the last minute. “Maybe not,” he mutters to himself. This is not an iteration of the character who has ever known peace.

To be clear, it’s not necessarily that one approach is better than the other, although Swayze is a little easier to root for. This just underscores the extent to which Road House is a concept that bends around its leading man. As similar as the two versions of the main character might be on paper – even recycling lines like “no one ever wins a fight” – Swayze and Gyllenhaal have such fundamentally different energies that their mere presence shifts the tone of the entire film around them. Swayze was one of a kind.