Title: Road House

Year: 1989

Director: Rowdy Herrington

Reviewed By: Garrett Chaffin-Quiray

Time capsule: the summer of 1989.

Location: multiplexes all over America.

Cast: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Do the Right Thing, Batman, The Abyss, Major League, She�s Out of Control and a Patrick Swayze-starring follow-up to Dirty Dancing called Road House.

Combining male adolescent fantasy with sundry pop cultural fixtures, Rowdy Herrington�s two-hour long comic strip is embroidered with all the simpleminded plot clichés of a thousand hours of bad TV and B-movie claptrap. It tells the story of super bouncer Dalton (Swayze), an Eastern philosophies major with terrific ass kicking panache, who is hired by Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to take over his troubled bar, the Double Deuce. Simple enough as a story sketched by screenwriters David Lee Henry and Hilary Henkin, Road House gets complicated when the hinge of Dalton�s new responsibility rests on an aging heavy in the bar�s sleepy town of Jasper.

Infected with the gusto of real screen acting, much of it in the past tense of a gifted career, Ben Gazzara�s Brad Wesley is a rich man with a hand in everyone�s business. Surrounded by interchangeable goons and sycophantic business owners kowtowing to him with kickbacks for protection, Wesley is an asshole of profoundly skewed intentions. He�s a kingpin with seemingly unending wealth. Yet he�s strangely unattached to any industry save extortion in the decidedly small stakes world of Jasper that�s little more than a one-gas pump, and one bar, town and therein lie the tension of the piece.

Unwilling to let the Double Deuce continue in its wayward spiral of drunken excess, brawls and staff corruption, Dalton resolves to make an honest go. In so doing he crosses Wesley, invokes the blood wrath of his bull, a ex-special forces martial arts wiz called Jimmy (Marshall Teague), and slowly orients Jasper�s small group of independently-minded store owners in a show of resistance to the Wesley machine.

Unable to go it alone, however, especially after he�s hurt in a bar fight, Dalton makes the acquaintance of Dr. Elizabeth Clay (Kelly Lynch), a leggy blonde emergency room lovely with a complicated history that involves Wesley, as does the back story of virtually every character in the film. Soon afterwards, the cigarette smoking, coffee drinking, impossibly tanned and longhaired Dalton becomes the good doctor�s lover, despite her continual admonishment concerning his penchant for violence along with his gentleness and otherworldly sensitivity.

Finally, though, it�s to the force of man love the film turns to sop up its loose ends when Dalton�s friend, former trainer, father figure and id to his thinking man�s super ego Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott) shows up to lend a helping hand. Together they begin routing Jimmy and Wesley�s other meat puppets until Wade is caught, killed and sacrificed to the outrage of Dalton�s internal beast.

Forced to take on the remainder of Wesley�s private army alone, Dalton disables his foe, is shot and nearly falls to Wesley�s psychosis before being saved by the trio of Jasper businessmen who�ve been slowly circling the action, waiting for their turn at revenge. Thusly, Dalton conquers his inner demons, lies to rest the unfortunate, Wesley-inspired complications controlling the community of Jasper, sustains order at the Double Deuce and manages to secure a happy place in the privacy of Elizabeth Clay�s bed.

Grossing some $30 million, Road House was a modest success in a summer filled with comic book tie-in hits, blockbuster sequels and the normal patter of smaller films with more limited appeal. Still, its appeal has been inestimably improved through nearly constant circulation on American cable channels like TNT and USA where its presence as a staple of dumb guy movies has made it a shining star of the beer commercial aesthetic. That is, its combination of violence with blank slate reactive star, satirical and wise supporting older male, mostly naked stripper-chicks, fist fights, gun shots, monster trucks, rock and roll and unimportant plot have made it a keynote for twenty- and thirty-somethings longing nostalgically for the bliss of the late 1980s.

There is the piece of ass provided by Denise (Julie Michaels), the cheesecake trophy girlfriend of Jimmy. There are likable character actors cast as beaten down Jasper businessmen waiting for their chance to fight back. There are numerous sperm and penis-size jokes at Dalton�s expense. A few training montages are thrown in for good measure, along with a prolonged sex scene of unexpected sensual content scored to Otis Redding�s "These Arms of Mine", and there�s a pleasant rockabilly soundtrack featuring the Jeff Healey Band ("Roadhouse Blues" and "Traveling Band"), Alabama ("(There�s a) Fire in the Night") and George Strait ("All My Ex�s Live in Texas").

Altogether, it�s a formula of escape and wish fulfillment. Dalton is not just the suave and controlled head bouncer of the Double Deuce, he�s an amalgam of supreme male parts and talents showcased in an outdoor Tai Chi ritual. In this moment of reflection, Swayze is stripped to the waist, beaded with the drapery of glistening sweat and elegantly put through the display of his solo body in motion. Not for nothing he�s ripped from head to foot with the tone of a body builder, equipped with the grace of Swayze�s real-life dancing background and surrounded by the gauze of force tempered by reasons since he�s a thinking man�s brawler.

In short, homoeroticism masquerades as action adventure spectacle and delivers little more than the fluff of a Sunday afternoon�s entertainment. Entirely broad, ridiculous and perhaps even purposefully stupid at the level of plot, Road House is best remembered with the quip, "I thought you�d be bigger", to which Dalton responds, "I get that a lot." It�s a statement of character and impact as much as it�s about the movie itself.

As a coming-of-age parable about strength and restraint paired with physical violence, sexual appeal and overall charisma, Dalton is a rare bird. Not simply because he�s rarely more eloquent than when he�s fighting but precisely because of this willingness to fight when all else fails, his variously derivative philosophical ideas and down-home sensibilities included.

Dalton is cool. He always gets the girl even if he has to lose an old friend in the process of winning her over. It�s an age old trial by fire with rockabilly incantations, a late �80s fashion infusion and character actors who�ve long since faded into obscurity. That�s precisely why it�s so damn good, time after time after time, and it�s exactly why Road House is the crown jewels of its sub-genre because it provided the summer of 1989 with unselfconscious action without any pretensions about high art or a more substantial purpose.

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