What are the differences between Patrick Swayze’s ‘Road House’ and Jake Gyllenhaal’s remake?

Jake Gyllenhaal’s new movie Road House, an update of the 1989 cult classic action film starring Patrick Swayze is now available to stream in the US on Prime Video. Gyllenhaal plays the role of Elwood Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter, haunted by his past and down on his luck - homeless and living in his car until he is offered a job as a Cooler, the chief doorman at the Road House - a Florida Keys drinking den where Ernest Hemingway allegedly drank himself into a stupor back in the day.

In some ways, Gyllenhaal’s Dalton is a departure from Swayze’s - for a start he is wittier, but there are some similarities in both portrayals of the Cooler. Both find an outlet for their inner rage, clearing the riff-raff out of rowdy bars; in Swayze’s film, the bar is a rough and ready honky-tonk joint called the Double Deuce while the centerpiece of the remake is a more upmarket establishment, but just as violent and unhinged. One thing that ties both versions is neither takes itself too seriously.

Anger issues

In the 1989 movie, Swayze gives his team of bouncers some sound advice:  “People who really want to have a good time won’t come to a slaughter house. And we’ve got entirely too many troublemakers here. Never underestimate - and be nice. If someone gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice. All you have to do is watch your back and each other’s”. Some of the dialogue in the Doug Luman-directed remake was borrowed from R. Lance Hill’s 1989 screenplay. The line: “No one ever wins in a fight” appears in both and the script was similar enough for Hill to file a lawsuit and attempt to get the film blocked.

In the remake, everything seems to be going smoothly for Gyllenhaal’s Dalton until he discovers that all is not quite as it seems on the surface at this particular paradise. While the plot doesn’t deviate too much from the original storyline, this new version digs deeper into the emotional and mental health issues, addiction, bruised egos, spite and violence and its repercussions for both the perpetrators and victims.

Both Daltons are patched up by and begin romantic liaisons with attractive doctors. Road House is not exactly a faithful remake of the cult classic which hit the screens almost 40 years ago even if the storyline is more or less the same. The major difference is the ending - while Swayze’s Dalton settles down as his relationship with doctor Elizabeth Clay (Kelly Lynch) starts to get serious, in the new version, he is seen getting the hell out of town, leaving his medical admirer behind.

Road House premiered on Amazon Prime on Thursday 21 March 2024, almost 35 years after the original movie’s debut in May 1989. It reached a 63% tomatometer rating from 122 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. A review in The New Yorker noted: “The movie passes from memory as quickly as it passes on the screen. But there’s a poignancy to the sight of Gyllenhaal, now forty-three and shredded to the max, paying tribute to his late former screen partner”.