Road House

Directed by Doug Liman, Road House follows ex-UFC fighter Elwood Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he’s tasked with cleaning out the riffraff from a rough-and-tumble Florida bar – with the movie subsequently detailing Dalton’s ongoing battles with a local land developer (Billy Magnussen’s Ben) and his various hired goons (including Conor McGregor’s Knox). Filmmaker Liman, armed with a script by Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, delivers a comfortably familiar actioner that benefits from its tongue-in-cheek execution and raft of exciting, energetic sequences, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the movie’s overall impact is heightened by the predictably commanding efforts of its compelling, charismatic star – with Gyllenhaal’s mesmerizing performance matched by agreeably eclectic periphery players like Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, and Joaquim de Almeida. (McGregor’s flamboyant, wildly over-the-top turn remains an ongoing highlight within the proceedings, to be sure.) And although Liman and cinematographer Henry Braham have suffused the proceedings with a slick, CGI-forward visual sensibility that’s never not a complete distraction, Road House, which climaxes with a brutal, satisfying brawl between Dalton and Knox, generally (and predominantly) comes off as a gleefully ludicrous endeavor that feels like it could’ve been made in the 1990s.

*** out of ****