Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is a cooler, a bouncer who is in charge of desecrating situations.
Hired to help the owner of the Double Deuce, Dalton finds himself in the crosshairs of local businessman/supervillain Westley (Ben Gazzara).
Road House was a missing piece in my action movie viewing.
This movie is a lesson in the power of movie stars.
It is hard to imagine anyone else embodying the character’s seeming contradictions.
Swayze made his name with Dirty Dancing, but he had been in action movies before: Uncommon Valour, Red Dawn and Steel Dawn.
His Star persona is unique - particularly in the era.
Combining a dancer’s grace, a sensuality, an emotional expressiveness and sense of inner calm, he is a complement rather than an opposite to the more body builder physiques of the action heroes of the era.
That expressiveness made him perfect for playing a romantic lead, esp in roles like Dirty Dancing and Ghost. He makes Roadhouse work.
That slow burn emotional availability - the sense of confidence in his body.
When Dalton says “Play nice,” it makes sense coming out of Swayze.
He has a sincerity that undercuts the irony implicit in the line as written.
While expressed in physicality, Swayze’s particular brand of masculinity is not based on machismo.
Swayze’s presence is the anchor that defines Road House, and makes the slim narrative and musical numbers hold together.
I almost want to call the film operatic or at least musical.
It is based on a form of expressionism, a hyperbolic distillation of the western and the action film.
That simplicity is embodied in how Dalton and antagonist Westley are positioned as opposites - they are the moral binary, literally living across the river from each other.
Unlike Dalton, who seems satisfied with the bare minimum, Ben Gazzara’s villain is motivated by jealousy.
He is the stereotypical man who has everything - his entitlement hammered home by the scene of him driving across both lanes of the road.
His plan to take over is already in motion but Dalton’s appearance seems to catalyse him.
So many scenes of Dalton end on a cutaway to Wesley watching him (with admiration? Lust?).
Dalton’s existence seems to act as a rejection of everything Westley embodies. He puts the lie to Westley’s idea of success.
And whereas Westley shows a gleeful disregard for people’s lives, Dalton does not fight to cause pain or kill. He kills only a few people, and they are people who are shown to have no respect for life.
In the end, Westley is destroyed by his victims. Balance is restored, but not by an outsider.
Dalton is like a hair metal version of Shane (or Mad Max), inspiring the locals to restore their communities.
Everything in the movie is dialled to 11 - the fights, the cars, the explosions.
Road House is both extreme and stripped-down - every choice is distilled to purest hyperbole.
It is probably why the movie endures as a singular object.
The time, the cast, all the context and filmmaking choices amounted to something special and unique.
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