Midweek Mention... Road House

Roadhouse

Reegs: Why do they change everything all the time? And why doesn't AI fuck off?

Sidey: Oh, it's fucking crap.

Reegs: we're into remake

Sidey: Exactly what I was gonna say. Yeah. We are into remake territory. Yeah. We, this

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. I, which I dismissed out of hand when I originally sort of surfaced. 'cause I'd not seen the first one.

Reegs: You've never seen the first one? No. Okay. That was Patrick Swayze.

Yeah. I can't remember the character's name because it wasn't a real one. I've seen it like loads and loads. It's been MeMed into

Sidey: oblivious. James Dalton.

Reegs: Dalton. Oh, it was, it was Dalton as well as it, I should've realized. And he was a kind of philosopher bar brawler

Sidey: I thought film ba bouncer just sounds a bit fucking weak to me.

Yeah. By having seen this, I might go back and. Watch it. I dunno. But yeah,

Reegs: Roadhouse and directed by Doug Lyman. Like him. Yeah. I like some of his stuff. And the writers of the movie both worked with Shane Black and you

Sidey: Oh, nice. You can

Reegs: see that kind [00:01:00] of influence throughout this screenplay. I think a little bit

Sidey: had always intended to be a streamer. This one,

Reegs: Yes. Didn't, did not get a theatrical

Sidey: which we can get onto how Doug Lyman felt about that later on. How does it start though?

Reegs: It starts with a POV shot of you smashing some guy. Yeah. You basically was your POV and your smashing some bald guy in the face. And then it gets worse because now you are Post Malone, which is even worse

Sidey: find. I don't know. Is he a tough guy? I didn't think him is. 'cause it's sort of like, bare knuckle brawling.

Reegs: It's illegal underground

Sidey: for, for cash. Yeah. While I was away, I saw a sign for a fight club. Okay. Which I thought was breaking the first two rules.

Yes. And also weird. But yeah, this is sort of, bare knuckle for cash fighting. Yeah. I think in this scene he's fought half a dozen people already. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah,

Sidey: And no one can touch him,

Reegs: out and it's of that real kinetic action style where you can see the [00:02:00] punches really connecting on the faces and the impact in them. It's done very cleverly with CGI and other bits and wizardry. And we're seeing it through the eyes of Frankie who story.

Yes, she is. As we'll come to find out the owner of the Roadhouse. And she's there basically to find a hard man to help police her bar

Sidey: isn't there an

agency that she could go to or something?

Reegs: I don't know. We'll talk a little bit about the town that they live in. I guess when we get there where a fight is. Well, throughout this movie, a fight can kick off at any literally any moment a reason.

It doesn't need to be a reason though. Somebody will just stand up and glass the person they're

Sidey: and it, and it's a like, picture perfect town as

Reegs: Yeah. Lovely, beautiful beach side town. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the things I love. And so, anyway, we see, we get intro. She's looking for somebody to, to

Sidey: she needs some muscle, a

Reegs: bar.

She needs some mussel and we'll meet some muss. The stranger coming into town, Jake. Gill Hall in a black hoodie, he'll walk through the actual neon roadhouse sign title on the way into the [00:03:00] Fight club, and he'll sit down to fight Post Malone, take his shirt off, and oh my God, I did. Yeah, he looks unbelievable in this movie.

He's got the come gutters. Yeah. You know, at the

Sidey: He, he trained for a long time with like proper UFC and MMA fighters to get in shape for this and it fucking paid off. 'cause

Reegs: pays off. He looks incredible in the movie and the Post Malone, who we've just seen knockout, like five or six guys goes back to his corner, ready to have this scrap with Jake Gill Hall and his Cornerman says, oh, do you know who that is?

And just even the words are enough for him to like. I'm not fighting that guy. I know who that is. He starts tearing the place up. I'll never fight that

Sidey: guy. Yeah. He's

Reegs: And he walks out and so Jake Gill Hall is paid an even amount of money and he goes off to the carpark afterwards and some disappointed fan stabs him.

Yeah, just outta the blue, which he just completely no sells. Just like it didn't ha nothing happened. And the guy like gets weirded out and walks off and then Frankie will turn up [00:04:00] back again and say, okay, I need it. I got it. You are right 'cause you've been stabbed. But also I know it's a scam. That you've been running.

So him and Post Malone have been running this scam. It doesn't really make any sense 'cause he still has to beat the shit out of five guys before,

Sidey: lose the, you know.

Reegs: you know. Yeah. The other fights

Sidey: especially it's post mode and I wouldn't think he's that great a fighter anyway.

Reegs: So anyway, but she sets out the basic premise of the movie, I need help at my bar and you are the man I want to come do

Sidey: start having flashbacks yet to his

Reegs: Yeah, probably pretty much after this scene. Yeah.

Sidey: I thought it was immediately obvious. What would, what had

Reegs: Well,

as he's driving away, actually afterwards, he's, he's, listen, he hears a fight, doesn't he? And it, and it's like, sort of becomes sort of, the sounds of the fight

Sidey: Yeah, it takes it

Reegs: Yeah. And it also becomes, it mingled him with the sounds of a train approaching and he

Sidey: Oh, he is gonna kill himself, isn't he?

Reegs: and it's like, oh fuck, he's gonna kill himself. And at the last minute, really at the very last minute, 'cause his car is

Sidey: it hit, he gets hit, but he gets the car to back. 'cause it won't start when it, like the classic sort of cliche [00:05:00] thing, he can't get it to get off the tracks. Yeah. And he gets the car to move just enough so he gets hit. But he is like bruised but not disintegrated. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: So we see he's really at rock bottom, I guess. Being friends with Post Malone will probably do that to you. So he does end up then after this taking a bus out to the Roadhouse.

I think he's this little. Town, I can't remember what it's called. Queens Ville. Yeah. Pleasantville. And the first thing he meets is a precocious teenage bookseller. Yeah. Who tries to introduce him to the area. And he does end up going out to the, the roadhouse. You see it

Sidey: pretty well. She's, Frankie's propositioned him about the role and said, look, we're just getting like, people coming in constantly tearing the place up and you know, we need some help with that.

Reegs: So when he turned up, like I had visions of it still being like a redneck bar or whatever, but it's like,

Sidey: it's like a Margaritaville. Yeah, it's like Jimmy Buffet.

Reegs: Yeah, exactly. And it's

Sidey: And yet the bands in it play behind a steel cage. [00:06:00] Yeah. Really? How rowdy can it be?

Reegs: It's quite good because when he first goes in, he just sits down and has a look around. He tries to get a coffee. She won't make him a coffee unless he calls it a Cuban coffee.

Sidey: But he's sort of scoping

Reegs: of, he's sort of scoping it out.

He'd had done some good noticing with the guy off roof,

Sidey: Yeah, exactly. Observational skills to the max. And he's sort of, who's dangerous in here? Hardly anyone. But all of a sudden a biker gang Yeah.

Appear. Yeah. Who.

we,

We, will later on learn what their motivation is. But they just appear to be dickheads that turn up looking for trouble. Yes. And they cause a load of trouble and eventually he takes it, you're waiting for it to all kick

Reegs: You are.

Sidey: Yeah. And you're waiting for him to go like full van Dam on them.

But

Reegs: he's still diviv given it this sort of, 'cause Gill Hall's got that kind of goofy. Yeah. Like he's got their name grin on his face a lot of the time, and he's just still playing up to that thing.

He's being super nice to the guy. He's constantly trying to deescalate the situation. Is

Sidey: He says to them, like, is the, is the hospital near here?

Does he ask me if they've got health

Reegs: it says first, if [00:07:00] you've got good health insurance, the teeth are you sure you want to do this?

Sidey: There's probably half a dozen or so of them and just him.

Reegs: How close is nearest hospital? 25 minutes. Have you got your own car? All this stuff.

Sidey: Then it kicks off

Reegs: and he, he just, in the first fight, he just slaps them all. There's like six guys trying to fight him and he just, one-handed slaps them, bitch slaps them all. I think he does eventually break one guy's arm.

He beats the shit of

Sidey: Yeah. It's a great little fight sequence. I enjoyed it.

Reegs: And then at the end of it, when they're all on the floor, Frankie's like, no, I'm not paying for these guys to get a taxi or anything like this. So he ends up driving

Sidey: because of a lift? Yeah.

Reegs: And drops them off where he meets Ellie.

Danielle, Milky or a doctor there, she'll, she'll tend to his injuries and

Sidey: And maybe his dick.

Reegs: love.

Yeah, exactly, exactly that. Yeah. So he very quickly, Dalton, everybody knows about him. It's a small town. I could relate to this. So everywhere he

Sidey: I think they were all in the bar, the whole town, just all there.

Yeah.

Reegs: And we get like basically a kind of montage scene of him being nice to the local [00:08:00] community. He's like a one man, a team.

And then at night he's teaching Lucas Gage and this other guy that he finds how to beat the shit out people

Sidey: They pick it up dead quick as well. Yeah.

Reegs: And it's just amazing. It's like the Simpsons, like they, or South Park or something. They're just, every night this bar, there's like families sitting there and then suddenly a guy will just sit.

Get up and hit another guy with a chair or something. It's brilliant. So funny. And then, yeah, people, but it's also quite violent as well. A lot of broken bones and punches in the face and all that sort so we get introduced to the, the main bad guy, Ben Brandt.

Sidey: He's so rubbish.

Reegs: this guy.

I didn't mind him.

Actually.

he's got the right haircut to, to really annoy me.

Sidey: He's like, he's not in, he's just the boss because he's got money. He's not a tough

Reegs: He's not a physical

Sidey: anything up. Anything he needs done, he has to pay someone to do it.

Reegs: His introduction's brilliant because they're on this yacht in a storm and a guy's trying to give him a,

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: a

Sidey: Cut.[00:09:00]

Reegs: cutthroat razor. Yeah. And he's like bobbing around and he's getting really pissed off and his underlings are having to tell him how everybody's failed him and all this.

So he's just impotent, rage and

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: all he is.

Sidey: So he's, he's the bad guy and he is gonna have to call in some, because I think there's a, is there another fight? They, they beat him once again.

Reegs: Yeah, there's a few kickings off and this, that and the other. The guy Dell or whatever his name, the guy that he put in hospital in that first fight he comes back with his posse and there's a really bad CGI shot on the bridge.

Do you remember where they tried to run him over? Anyway, he's living on this houseboat and they've, for the plot dropped that there might be a crocodile there, and Dell turns up at his house and is immediately finished off by a crocodile. It's brilliant. This movie,

Sidey: yeah. I. I'd forgotten about that

Reegs: What the guy getting

Sidey: as you were

Reegs: a crocodile.

Sidey: was like, did someone get eaten by CRO on this film?

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: And they did?

Reegs: Fucking amazing.

Sidey: So they're gonna, they are gonna need to now recruit some

Reegs: Yeah, well it's actually [00:10:00] Brandt's dad, who's the big gangster. The proper gangster. He's gonna get fed up of all this. 'cause I mean, it's very long-winded, but long story short, there's a property.

Sidey: It's a Goonies thing, isn't it?

They want, they want the property because they're gonna build a luxury resort there and make a,

Reegs: that's why there's

Sidey: coin. Coin, coin,

Reegs: at the thing as well as the fucking mentalists who live in this place. So they're gonna send in Connie McGregor Knox. And we know he is called Knox 'cause he's wearing a necklace that says Knox. And he's got Knox Knox Knox tattooed across his chest.

Sidey: Yeah. Now how do you feel about Conor McGregor In real life?

Reegs: Yeah, right wing Grif history Gremlin faced Anthony War Thompson thing.

Sidey: Yeah. It's a prick. Mm-hmm. And he amplifies that persona in this

Reegs: Yeah.

And they just didn't need to get a real life villain to do it would've been better if they'd have like, had an actor instead of just a real life scumbag.

Sidey: Even just him walking on screen was irritating me. Yeah. Because he, he just over, but I think he does walk like that in real life.

Reegs: sort of struts

Sidey: It's like a power strut. Yeah. It's [00:11:00] like no one actually walks like that in real life and it's like a pure affectation.

Reegs: It is. He's easily the worst part of the movie. And if you were gonna say that you wouldn't watch a movie for this reason, I would understand it.

'cause he's a fucking asshole. He's introduced jumping out of a married woman's balcony, isn't he? And then he is like completely bollock

Sidey: Absolutely lad. Yeah. Lad la lad.

Reegs: and then he like beats some guy up for the jacket.

Sidey: There's an ongoing thing of him just crashing cars instead of parking them. 'cause he's sound

Reegs: yeah, he's, he's just awful. Really. Just over the top and like, so, like I say, maybe would've been okay in the context of this movie, were he not just such a fucking awful person in

Sidey: Life, but you are watching it knowing that he's gonna get his ass kicked at some point.

So there's that to look forward to.

Reegs: Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of plot, but how much detail

Sidey: it's not that much plot really. We've been told what they want now. The only extra bit that they add in is the

Reegs: Ellie, the love

Sidey: Milk. Milk. Yeah. Her father is the sheriff. Yes. He'd recognize. And then it turns out that he is a [00:12:00] bit duplicitous, isn't he?

Reegs: he's in league as

Sidey: He's in with the gangsters.

Reegs: brand.

And Dalton will discover all this and kind of set up a crime scene. There's, I loved the fucking whiplash of the scene where he's like wrestling because his big secret is he killed some guy in

UFC.

Sidey: keeps, he, he has sort of flashbacks to his UFC career.

Yeah. And

Reegs: he went too far

Sidey: And I thought it was obvious. It was obvious that he killed someone. I think the guy that he thought was his pal or

Reegs: is a train. Somebody trained with a friend and he killed him in the

Sidey: some reason just keeps. Pummeling him. I was on the floor. I, I don't like combat sports at the best time, but I really don't like UFC.

I think it's absolutely barbaric. And you think, well surely this, this will happen at some point in real life. It's, it's absolutely fucking awful.

Reegs: But it gives some context as well for the comedic elements of the scene where he's constantly trying to deescalate because you know that obviously once he went too far and he knows all about limits and making sure that people are all right.

So, but you get the whiplash of the scene where, nOx goes [00:13:00] fucking crazy and they burn down the bookstore and the girl from the beginning's in it, and he, he loses a plot and he goes and kills that guy in the pool. He punches him in the throat and then lets him drown. And he has that like dark moment of, oh, have I gone too far?

And then it immediately whiplashes into a comedic scene with that bodyguard Mo who I really liked this character. He is like, oh, I never really liked these guys. I just thought they liked biking.

Sidey: So Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: and yeah,

Sidey: So yeah, he's like, yeah, he's a killer now.

He has actually just killed someone. I dunno there's any comeuppance for that at all,

Reegs: No, not at all.

Sidey: Never mentioned again.

Reegs: Then he sets up the police guy 'cause he sees the, the money and drugs and blah, blah, blah.

Sidey: Well, they, they kidnap Ellie, don't they?

Reegs: They do. And it leads to like a big chase and the

Sidey: Yeah. And he doesn't know at that point that her father's. On the take,

Reegs: he comes to him to say, oh, don't shoot, don't shoot.

Sidey: taken my

Reegs: taken my door and literally two minutes later he's like, twirling his mustache. Like they had, they didn't [00:14:00] take her at all. And then the guy's like, but we did, yeah, it's comedy plotting. And then there's just a great big con McGregor turns up. Literally it's like that as they're sort of arguing about it.

McGregor

Sidey: Well, 'cause they're on the, they're on the yacht in the middle of the ocean. Yeah. Jet skis his way out there. He nicks a boat.

Reegs: He's got a it's a dinghy because there's a shot when he is shot from behind that. Honestly, I thought I was watching a PS three game. Honestly, I did because it's the CGIs that bad. But yeah,

Sidey: this wasn't a cheap movie.

Reegs: No, no. And it looks good in, in a lot of places, but not in this scene. There's a big fucking thing on the water and a boat's blowing up and

Sidey: that, well, eventually they crashed the main boat into the roadhouse. I, there's nothing left of this fucking thing. Now it's worth Saban.

I know.

Reegs: And it will lead then to like a brutal fight between Knox Brandt sort of a bit and, Dalton.

Yeah. And. Again, that super, like the CGIs really good, the, the way that the punches look like they connect. I don't care what the internet says. I think it looks [00:15:00] great. And they have a really violent fight where eventually

Sidey: he looks beaten,

Reegs: looks like he's beaten, he is been stabbed in the side, and he'll grab some fucking wood and repeatedly stab McGregor to death.

I wish he'd done it for real, to be honest, but

Sidey: Got full method. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I was hoping that too.

Reegs: and

then that'll be it. It's just amazing. They start clearing the bar up afterwards. There's maybe a cursory mention of, don't worry, I'll handle the police element of

Sidey: Yeah. There's no

Reegs: like

Sidey: like no interview, no investigation, no. Like, didn't you kill someone in swimming pool?

Reegs: Wasn't there about three boats

Sidey: were just blown up

Reegs: Like, what

Sidey: in this sleepy little coastal village. Yeah.

Amazing.

Reegs: So he'll, he'll himself and then he'll kind of, he leaves some money. The money that he confiscated from the drug deal for the girl and her father in the bookstore that we barely

Sidey: Yeah. Oh, they're fairly irrelevant to it

Reegs: and he'll sort of drift on.

I like he puts the hoodie back on. There's been this sort of thing of. She's compared into a character in a Western and [00:16:00] he'll drift out Western style onto the next town and over the credits which are quite inventive. Lots of stuff being smashed and thrown around. Yeah. Sadly we get the news that Conor McGregor survived the fight and escapes the hospital for a sequel.

I hope they never

Sidey: it is in production, but I dunno if it's in production hell or, filming has begun. I dunno. Yeah, I, everything apart from Conne Gregor.

Yeah. agreed.

Reegs: I thought Gil Hall was great. I really enjoyed

Sidey: I like the fine, I really like Doug Lyman's pro direction of those sort of action sequences.

'cause he did the first born film. Those ones, I think the fights and that are a bit. Clearer than the green grass ones where it's just the camera's like been thrown around and so like he's got form for that and he's

Reegs: did Edge Lord of Tomorrow as well.

Sidey: Yeah. He was real disgruntled goat about, I think he, he, he boycotted the premier 'cause he, I think he.

Thought it was gonna be theatrically. Theatrically

Reegs: It's an Amazon Prime [00:17:00] joint. And they don't tend to release their movies theatrically, do

Sidey: No, it was never Jake Jones just said, I love that guy, but it was always a streamer.

Reegs: Ah, it's a shame in a way 'cause I think it would've done quite good bucks on

Sidey: the challenge.

So the film was made with the theatrical release in mind. However, MGM and Amazon got cold feet and felt it would be unfairly compared to the original and be critically savaged on those grounds. Blah, blah, blah. There it was ca therefore it was canceled and the movie went straight to streaming this upset Douglas who felt shortchanged.

And especially after knowing that they did. The exact opposite with the beekeeper, which did get a theatrical release and was a big hit. So, I think it got a bit, bit of a sort of ARS about that, but

Reegs: I, well, I

Sidey: did a good job with it.

Reegs: I, I had, because I wasn't behooven to the original at all, I could just enjoy this for the movie that it was. And I picked up the occasional reference to the movies, but nothing like over the top. It was like a new thing and inward of itself and took advantage of Jake Gill Hall's particular weird charm as a leading [00:18:00] man.

Sidey: He's done some other fighting movies. Well, hasn't he? But I've not seen them as, there's one way. He is like super jacked as a fighter and he's obviously good at it.

I thought he was, he was excellent in it. The only, the only downside for me was Conor McGregor, but he did lose. Yeah. So I was happy about that.

Reegs: The only other thing I didn't like is considering like this was a movie absolute jam packed full of like sexy people looking sexy.

There's no sex in it

Sidey: No.

Reegs: all. Like. There's barely, there's like a hint

Sidey: they kiss, don't they hear they kiss? That's it.

Reegs: even take their shirt off or like, do you know what I mean? There's no, it's such a sexless movie for such a sexy thing.

Sidey: I know. We don't get to see his dick at all. The budget was 85 million, which is quite a lot.

Yeah.

Reegs: I worth every penny. I would say I would pay that just to watch it again.

Yeah.

Sidey: That is a strong recommend. I would pay that not to watch Colin McGregor again. 'cause he's a douche.

Reegs: Is, and I, it's just at least hilarious how badly his political career is going. Thank Christ

Sidey: for that.

Is he trying to do all that

Reegs: Yeah. Oh [00:19:00] God. He's trying to do like an Irish reform.

Sidey: God,

Reegs: know. In league with all that lot, man.

Sidey: But yeah, Breez, this one's another breezy one. Probably 90 minutes. Maybe not, maybe just a couple minutes more, but no more than that.

Reegs: I like it knows, it's like, and it was surprisingly funny at times because it knows how sort of unselfconsciously stupid it is a lot of

Sidey: the time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: and it's got that real like eighties excess about it, like really over the top.

So, yeah. Much better than I would thought it was gonna be strong. Recommend