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Road House

Road House

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $13.46
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The movie was ok but I have seen patrick in better movies.
Review: Patrick could be such a better actor, but this movie didn't have the quality of the other movies that he has appeared in over the years. Also the movie was very groase and to bloody for me and you both in my point of view. But some people seem to enjoy the blood and guts in a movie; but how the world is turning out their is to much blood in movies. thank you for reading my review.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "I am only good at one thing, Doc, I never lose! Never!"
Review: Nudity and ass-kicking! Where else can you see a great bar fight and not be in it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Its an excellent movie It is one of Patrick Swayze's best .
Review: this is one of Partick Swayze's top 5 movies that i have seen. i like the acion and attiude in the movie where Swayze tries to impose his superiority by saying"IT'S MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY". Even Kelly Lynch has done a great job.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "BUTT-KICK'N ACTION" GREAT!!
Review: BEST ALL AROUND ACTION MOVIE. NEVER A DULL MOMENT, SWAYZE & ELLIOT GREAT TEAM. EXCELLENT!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better Than All Of Tom Cruise's Movies Put Together
Review: This movie RULES! Low on logic, high on adrenilin, this movie delivers the goods. Sam Shepard remains undeposed as is The Coolest Guy on the Planet.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better Than All Of Tom Cruise's Movies Put Together
Review: This movie RULES! Low on logic, high on adrenilin, this movie delivers the goods. Sam Elliot remains undeposed as is The Coolest Guy on the Planet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Brain dead cinema at its finest.
Review: Patrick Swayze's crowning achievement. He's Dalton- the NYU philosophy major turned king of the bouncers. Dalton enthralls us with his wisdom with lines such as "Be nice" or "Pain don't hurt." He is ably supported by the king of cool, Sam Elliot, as the bouncer guru. Opposing them is Ben Gazzara as big, bad man around town, Brad Wesley.

This movie is a hoot! A well-made and fast paced action flick. It's a guilty pleasure. You know it's bad; yet you can't help watching it. Once you start watching "Road House," you won't be able to stop. We have rednecks fighting, their girlfriends doing stripteases on tables, more fights, a monster truck used as a prop, more fights, a trophy room that could have only been stocked by hunting in a zoo, more fights, Memphis Mafia member Red West as a supporting actor, more fights, and a stuffed polar bear being used as a weapon against the baddies. A special mention must be made for Marshall R. Teague as Jimmy, Brad Wesley's main goon. Jimmy stares at Dalton. Jimmy laughs maniacally when he burns down a house. Jimmy informs Dalton during a fight of what he used to do to guys like Dalton in prison. (It leads one to believe that when Jimmy was staring at Dalton it might have been more about checking out his bod than trying to intimidate him.)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Goot B action movie
Review: This is one of those movies that comes on TBS/TNT and
several other basic channels fairly often. Why? Well,
it's one of those cheesy movies that you like to watch
when you simply want a simple action movie to watch on
a late night. Yes, this has alot of cheesy one liners
and some of the stuff you have to look past like Daltons
insane cash demands. As you know, this is supposed to
be a small town. Just as another reviewer said that for
a small town alot of people in it seem to be really
rich.

I love the bar scenes and there is no doubt The Jeff
Healey Band gives the bar scenes a big boost. The band
is very good and this bar is something I could see me
at sometimes. And The band makes me give this movie
the 4th star instead of three. Most of the characters
played there parts well... But I didn't think Kelly
Lynch added very much. In fact, I was done tired of
her by the scene where the monster truck ran over
the cars.

Another thing I didn't like is the movies attempt to
sound witty but only sound cheesy. It's almost like
the movie makers wanted to see the bad guys as more
than average dumb like thugs. Sadly, it failed.

However, the action was really good and the movie got
better with the addition of Sam even though he started
out quick and toward the end of the movie he started to
not matter very much. I liked the fight with Jimmy by
the lake and pulling guys throats out isn't something
typically done in this type of flicks.

Pros:

-The Jeff Healey Band

-Good Brawling

-Decent action

Cons:

-Predictable ending

-Cheesy one Liners

-Drags here and there

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Art of War according to Patrick Swayze
Review: The 'so bad it's good' mutation of standard film criticism has reached incredible heights of popularity over the last decade or so, spearheaded by those Mystery Science Theater 3000 wags and subsequently cultivated by certain cinema-fans who have a penchant for drinking spirits and laughing hysterically at the mishaps of supposedly-serious schlock. But attaining the 'so bad it's good' status is a difficult task; for a movie to enter this rare sphere, the subject must have been originally produced with good intentions, i.e. with the desire of crafting a solid movie despite obvious discrepancies of script, acting, direction and overall thematic construction. Perhaps more than any decade, the 80's are a fertile ground of MST3K neophytes: the clothes, the hairstyles, the ethics and attitudes, the general emphasis of quantity over quality (especially, but not exclusive, to action flicks), the bottom-line mentality of the studios (sadly unchanged)...even decent entertainment of this period treads the perilous threshold of being dated by sheer visual hubris alone, with mainstay cult favorites like *The Breakfast Club*, *The Lost Boys* and *Buckaroo Banzai* existing as much as archived ~relics~ as amusing Saturday-afternoon diversions.

*Road House* holds the dubious crown of B-rated movies, the ultimate schlock of its era - no mean feat, given the innumerable dreck produced during the excess 80's. It flopped in the theaters, but has since gained a small-but-devoted following among those who like their cheese served smelly, with plenty of wisecrackin' material to exploit.

The story: Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is the best cooler in the business, a strong silent type who reads literature in his spare moments and for occupation keeps rowdy bar clientele in check through a mixture of politeness and precise fisticuffs. But there is more: Dalton is a philosophy grad from NYU (!) who occasionally waxes pseudo-profound in between bouts of arse-kickin'. We don't see much of the latter in the first part of the film, however: *Road House* utilizes the 'slow burn' technique, tantalizing us with Dalton's legend (building tension, ya know), and the hero doesn't prove his chops until well into the first act.

Anyway, Dalton is hired to clean up a roadhouse in Jasper, Missouri, the kind of place where "they sweep up the eyeballs after closing." After cluing in the staff to his personal Sun Tzu-esque work-ethic - "Never underestimate your opponent...Be nice! Until it's time to not be nice...", Dalton proceeds to accomplish his job via stony stares and martial art expertise, taking time on the side to seduce the local "Doc" (Kelly Lynch) and get advice from his mentor Wade Garret (Sam Elliot, just shamblin' through). Soon enough he discovers that a local business magnate by the name of Brad Wesely (Ben Gazzara, hamming it up nicely) has been exploiting the townsfolk with guns, thugs and a monster-truck (!!). Yep, this movie's got it all.

Road House is also a comprehensive index of cheesy one-liners:

"It's my way or the highway."

"Pain don't hurt." ( <-- one the greatest lines in cinematic history, IMO, with shameless delivery to boot)

"I own this town!"

"You're a dead man." (--x3)

"Have a Bloody Mary, Dalton? How about some breakfast?"

"Different town, same story." (--x2)

"Prepare to die!"

And it contains some of the most amusing homoerotic subtext between the hero and an antagonist this side of *Top Gun*:

"You're a$$ is mine!" (followed a little later by:)

"I used to [anally rape] guys like you in prison!"

...complete with the obligatory expose of Swayze's backside early on, to the pleased gasp of a female recipient.

Yet Dalton himself is a paradox, inscrutably hard to pin down in this rote retelling of the "good guy cleans up the bad town". Who is this man? Dalton lights up a cig every five minutes, and is later presented practicing Tai Chi & qi-gong breathing exercises on the lakeside. Dalton explains his philosophy to his blonde paramour, then ends it with an awkward expletive. Dalton preaches peace - "Nobody wins a fight" - but lives a life of violence, giving his all to protect the sphere of casual libation. Who is this man, this Dalton? Even given the emotional breakdown of the third act, where the fragments of Dalton's past are stitched together and the hero experiences an unusual epiphany of doubt, I'm still not sure. Still, the slow burn of the first half pays off nicely in the last twenty minutes, when the movie abandons such concepts as 'logic' and 'due process' and Swayze is allowed to unleash hell upon the nefarious villains, serving justice with extreme prejudice, followed by an act of "synergistic vigilantism" that is as surreally hilarious as it is unlikely.

I'm going to award this film a generous 3 (1/2) stars, for its 80's camp value, seamless conglomeration of stock clichés, and for Swayze himself - the embodiment of American Redneck Rage, tempered with a thin veneer of Sun Tzu. An essential Me-decade artifact.



Rating: 5 stars
Summary: incredible film
Review: Judging from the other reviews here, as well as the frequency that this film is shown on television, I can deduce that I'm not the only one who places Road House near the top of their "guilty pleasures" B-movie list. After having seen it about four times now, I am convinced that, despite the basic absurdity of the plot, violence, and lack of realism, that it has a kind of strange perfection. At first, I thought of it as a movie that's so bad it's good. But now I'm starting to think of it as a good movie that only pretends to be bad. There is not one boring scene, and almost every character is entertaining in one way or another, no matter how silly or stereotypical they appear at first glance. Road House takes all of the traditional elements of Westerns, martial arts and macho buddy films and rolls them into a single movie. There are tons of fight scenes, a villain with an army of henchmen, a monster truck used as a deadly weapon and lots of improbably philosophical lines inserted in the middle of the action. This is one of the best campy films in the "one man army cleans up town full of redneck bullies" genre since the Billy Jack movies. In a way, Road House can be considered a precursor to some of Quentin Tarantino's films, which so brilliantly combine action, suspense and humor.

Patrick Swayze is perfect as the legendary bouncer Dalton, who, in addition to being a martial arts expert, has a degree in Philosophy. The plot of Road House most closely resembles the classic Western, with Dalton being the lone gunman hired to clean up the town. He is actually hired to clean up one very rough nightclub, The Double Deuce, a place where eyeballs are swept up at the end of the night in the words of the club's owner and typical of the film's often hilariously over-the-top dialogue. The scenario at this club is absurd. There are something like a dozen bouncers here, and Dalton reveals that his fee is $5000 up front and $500 a night. If you think about it (bad idea with a movie like this), how is any owner going to pay all these salaries just to keep a bar in the middle of nowhere open? Not very realistic, but no matter. We have to take the film at face value. The Double Deuce contains every redneck cliche, with constantly brawling drunken customers, a crooked bartender, platinum blond women who are quick to perform strip dances, and a country band that has to remain behind a plexiglass barrier for protection against the rowdy audience.

The real villain here is played by Ben Gazzara, as thug/town boss Brad Wesley, who flies around in a helicopter, lives in a mansion and shakes down the struggling townsfolk for protection money. Again, we must not look for realism here. The people he shakes down, such as the owner of an auto parts store and a car dealer, hardly appear to have the resources to support the grandiose lifestyle of an arch-villain, but again, who cares? The self-satisfied smirk he wears and the way he intimidates his gang of goons is hilarious. Gazzara, like several other characters, makes the part work not by being different or original, but by being the perfect embodiment of a movie cliche.

Sam Elliot also has a great part as Wade Garrett, who is Dalton's aging mentor in the bouncing business. He has this role down pat, as a swaggering, hard-drinking tough guy who has seen it all and dispenses macho pearls of wisdom with a lazy drawl. The dialogue in Road House is part of what makes it so funny, starting with Dalton telling the other bouncers with a steely-eyed stare, "It's my way or the highway." Kelly Lynch is Dalton's love interest, a beautiful blond doctor who is both charmed and repelled by Dalton's violent lifestyle. This conflict in their relationship, between the warrior male and the woman who loves him but wants him to walk away from it all, is another cliche, of course. What is so good about Road House is the way it shamelessly throws all these improbable situations and cliches right in the audience's face. It's a great movie for those who are simple enough to take it seriously, sophisticated enough to laugh at it, or some combination of the two.




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