We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
An action remake, '80s thrills, and '70s horror.
ROAD HOUSE (2024)
I rank the 1989 film Road House as one of the best, most entertaining action movies ever made, and I still have memories from catching a drive-in screening of the film during its initial theatrical run 35 years ago. Five year old me, sitting in a car with my parents, taking in an awesome, badass movie. I knew as soon as it was announced that a remake was on the way that there’s no way a new version of the concept could ever live up to the original. Road House was very much of its time; it captured lightning in a bottle through a mixture of magical elements like the casting of Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott as our heroes, the fact that it was made in the ‘80s, and that it had a man called Rowdy (that’s Rowdy Herrington) at the helm. The only way to approach a remake would be to take it as something entirely separate from that 1989 classic. And that’s what I did. I tried my best to push the original Road House out of my mind while giving the 2024 version a chance... and I ended up enjoying it, appreciating the fact that it didn’t aspire to be anything more than a modern version of an old school action movie.
Swayze played a man named Dalton in the original and Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dalton in the remake, but this is a completely different character, he just happens to share half of his name with Swayze’s character. The new guy is Elwood Dalton, a former UFC fighter with a tragic back story, who’s trying it outrun his past while making money in the underground fighting world. A woman named Frankie (Jessica Williams) offers him a job as head bouncer at her roadhouse - a place simply called Road House - in the Florida Keys, and he takes it. After all, it’s $5000 a week for a month of work, with free room and board. Soon after Dalton gets there, it becomes obvious that there’s some big time shady business going on in the area, so he starts looking into it. Screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry actually have scenes where this Dalton is attempting to do some investigating, but it’s really unnecessary, because the criminals come to cause trouble at the Road House regularly. He also strikes up a relationship with a local woman - Daniela Melchior as a doctor named Ellie - who has a direct connection to the criminal element. Her dad, who likes people to call him Big Dick (Joaquim de Almeida), may be the sheriff, but he’s also in league with crime boss Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen). Dalton is surrounded by bad guys almost at all times, so there’s no investigation needed.
Gyllenhaal does a fine job playing this completely different Dalton. He may be so troubled by his past that he considers letting himself get smashed by a train at the beginning of the movie, but he comes off like a happy guy most of the time, usually interacting with people with a big smile on his face. Characters even call him out on it, referring to him as Smiley and Mr. Rogers. But when the opportunities arise, he can kick ass with the best of them. And the opportunities arise quite often. Dalton fights his way through a lot of opponents over the course of the movie, with real-life former UFC fighter Conor McGregor chewing the scenery as Dalton’s toughest competitor, and over-the-top, maniacal henchman named Knox. (And Knox really wants you to know his name; not only does he wear a Knox necklace, but he also has Knox tattooed three times across his stomach.) This Dalton doesn’t get much help, either. There is no equivalent to the Sam Elliott character in this movie.
Magnussen did a good job of making Brandt an annoying, despicable character - and yet, anytime I watched him in action, I couldn’t help but wish that Brandt was being played by Travis Van Winkle instead. Van Winkle is a master at playing characters like this, as he has demonstrated in projects like the 2009 Friday the 13th and the Netflix series You, and really would have elevated the role of Brandt higher than Magnussen is able to take it. To my surprise, Van Winkle does eventually show up in the movie, but he’s completely wasted in a role that gives him maybe 30 seconds of screen time.
The action sequences in Road House 2024 are bigger and flashier than the ones in Road House 1989, but at their core they’re still old school action scenarios: chases, shootouts, fistfights. This is really why I ended up enjoying the film, because there aren’t enough old school-style action movies being made these days - and when they are made, they’re usually direct-to-video releases with low budgets. This was an Amazon production, and Gyllenhaal and director Doug Liman were given a choice between having a $60 million budget (which still would have been great for something like this) and getting a theatrical release, or having an $85 million budget and getting a streaming release. They went with the $85 million option, although Liman still made a fuss about the lack of a theatrical release. The $60 million choice probably would have been even better, as it would have forced the action to be even more down-to-earth and might have eliminated some moments of questionable CGI, but the $85 million choice worked out anyway.
I have watched the original Road House many times. I can’t see myself giving this remake many rewatches, but I had fun during my first viewing of it. It has proven to be a success for Amazon, so I hope it’s part of a comeback for the old school action movie.
NO MAN’S LAND (1987)
Before there was The Fast and the Furious, about an LAPD officer going undercover in the street racing world to bust a group of thieves who have been committing highway robberies to steal TVs and DVD players, there was Point Break, about an FBI agent going undercover in the surfing world to bust a group of bank robbers. And before there was Point Break there was No Man’s Land, which has faded into obscurity despite being produced by Ron Howard and written by Dick Wolf, the creator of the Law & Order franchise. This is very much a precursor to both Point Break and The Fast and the Furious – and like the latter film, it’s all about people racing around in fast cars.
The vehicles in this case are Porsche 911 sports cars. After an undercover cop is murdered while trying to find the perpetrators behind a series of Porsche thefts, Lieutenant Vincent Bracey (Randy Quaid) turns to rookie officer Benjy Taylor (D.B. Sweeney), who has a good amount of mechanical knowledge, and has him go undercover as a mechanic at an auto shop run by millionaire Ted Varrick (Charlie Sheen). Varrick is the LAPD’s prime suspect in these car thefts... but just like in Point Break and The Fast and the Furious, Benjy becomes friends with the suspected criminal and strikes up a romantic relationship with a woman who’s close to him: Ted’s sister Ann (Lara Harris). He comes to like the guy so much, he doubts his friend could be capable of committing the crimes his higher-ups think he’s responsible for and starts looking in the direction of someone else.
Before you know it, Benjy is blurring the lines between cop and criminal, taking part in car thefts and finding himself in the vicinity of murders.
Directed by Peter Werner, No Man’s Land isn’t as exciting or engaging as the aforementioned movies that followed in its footsteps, but it tells an interesting story, has a strong cast, and delivers some thrills, as well as some nice car chase and smash up sequences. I can understand why the movie doesn’t get mentioned very often: there isn’t much in the way of standout scenes to keep people talking about it. But it’s worth checking out. As a huge fan of The Wraith, I also found it fun to see Charlie Sheen and Randy Quaid in the same movie... and there's appearances by Bill Duke from Commando and Predator and Gary Riley from Summer School!
MAGIC (1978)
When people of my generation or younger hear the name Sir Richard Attenborough, his performance as John Hammond in Jurassic Park is probably the first thing that comes to mind. But Attenborough had fifty years of acting credits to his name when he signed on to appear in Jurassic Park, and had also directed several films. He even won the Best Director Oscar for 1982’s Gandhi, which also took home the Best Picture award. He was quite a prestigious fellow, as you might have figured from the “Sir” in front of his name. Back in 1978, he teamed up with William Goldman, a two-time Oscar winner and one of the most highly respected screenwriters in the industry, and actor Anthony Hopkins, who would go on to win Oscar himself and also get knighted, to make a movie... and given all the Oscars and knights involved, you might expect this to be some stuffy British period piece. But what Attenborough, Goldman, and Hopkins actually made together was a down-on-the-farm American horror movie. A classic called Magic.
I wanted to write about this one last week, to present it as a double feature with the Blumhouse production Imaginary, but I just didn’t have the time to get to it. But any week is a good week for Magic.
Hopkins might not have been the most fitting casting for his character Corky Withers, an American guy from the Catskills, but he delivered a great performance nonetheless, and if his accent isn’t entirely convincing, there’s a small excuse for it: “his old man was a limey.” Corky is a magician who performs with a foul-mouthed ventriloquist dummy called Fats that looks very much like him. His agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) hypes them as the best magician in fifty years and the first X-rated dummy. Despite Fats’ vulgarity, Greene is able to get the duo a network TV special... which freaks Corky out, because he doesn’t want to take the medical exam. That’s because he is seriously mentally ill and has come to believe not only that Fats is actually alive, but that he’s an overbearing presence in his life.
So Corky heads back home to the Catskills, where he ends up renting a waterside cabin on property owned by his high school crush Peggy (Ann-Margret), who is in an unhappy marriage with Duke (Ed Lauter), who also knew Corky back in his school days. Of course, Corky and Peggy end up having an affair, which causes even more trouble while Corky struggles with his sanity... and Fats turns homicidal.
We spend a lot of time with Corky and see a lot of interactions between him and Fats, which (since we’re largely seeing things from Corky’s perspective) are presented as if they really are two separate living beings. So Magic is often included on lists of killer doll movies, even though he’s not meant to be an actual killer doll. We just see Fats as a living being – and sometimes question if he really is alive – because that’s the way Corky sees him. When the murders start, Corky holds Fats responsible, even if he happens to be the one holding the weapons.
Magic is an awesome psychological thriller with some very creepy scenes and some painfully uncomfortable ones. It’s a respected entry in the horror genre and has a strong following – but it seems like we should hear it referenced more often, because it really does rank up there with the best horror movies of the 1970s. It may not be as intense, stylized, or flashy as some of the others we talk about more often, but it is a great film. Other possible versions could have seen Norman Jewison directing Jack Nicholson as Corky or Steven Spielberg directing Robert De Niro as Corky and it would be interesting to get a glimpse into alternate universes where those versions of Magic exist, but the version that paired Attenborough and Hopkins is a classic.
If you’re a fan of ‘70s horror movies and haven’t seen this one yet, you should get to it.
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