1 of 5 | Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal, R) shows Billy (Lukas Gage) how to disarm a rowdy customer. Photo courtesy of Prime Video
LOS ANGELES, March 18 (UPI) — It took several years before 1989’s Road House was considered an action classic. The remake, on Prime Video on Thursday, recaptures the fun of the original for modern audiences.
Frankie (Jessica Williams) hires underground fighter Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) to be a bouncer at her Glass Key, Fla. bar, The Road House. Developer Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen) keeps sending thugs to make trouble to force Frankie to leave.
The philosophy of Patrick Swayze’s Dalton in the original was “be nice.” This Dalton captures that in every fight scene by further developing the psychology of how Dalton tries to de-escalate violent situations — until he can’t avoid them.
Dalton threatens a gang’s motorcycles to lure members outside the bar, and then asks if they have health insurance and where the nearest hospital is. Dalton is being sincere because he wants to be sure they’re taken care of when he does what he has to do.
Of course, Road House is an action movie, so every punk proceeds to fight Dalton. That’s probably accurate to real-life brawlers, whose pride will never let them stand down.
Dalton even begins with open-handed slaps before he transitions to mixed martial arts moves. He keeps his composure when someone stabs him, still giving the attacker the chance to walk away before it escalates further.
Gyllenhall’s affable demeanor adds new energy to the cinema staple of bar fights. This is also complemented when Brandt’s father calls in Knox (Conor McGregor) to eliminate Dalton.
Knox is a violent muscle beast, but he’s also full of smiles and having a great time making trouble.
Brandt is the kind of smarmy villain who makes you enjoy his comeuppance. Besides what he’s doing to The Road House, the way he treats his own men is magnificently egregious.
Brandt makes his barber give him a shave on a boat in choppy waters, so he can get mad every time he gets cut. This is a guy who needs to go down.
The new Dalton is a former MMA fighter, and although the film waits to fully reveal his past, it won’t be hard to figure out why he left the ring. The film pays off Dalton’s dark past and doesn’t cop out on his violent nature.
Dalton wants to avoid further violence, but these bad guys force his hand, like they always do to John Wick or Rambo. If they just left him alone, they’d have no problem, or at least no additional problems on top of Frankie not selling The Road House.
The action is not over-edited. The camera is part of the fights, following characters back and forth, which also continues in dialogue scenes. In that regard, director Doug Liman elevates the more straightforward action of the 1989 film.
Most of the action looks real as it’s either the leads or their stuntmen performing choreography. A computer-generated pickup truck stunt is glaringly fake by comparison, although a crocodile looks better. Some boat stunts look like real boats crashing and exploding on the water.
The local doctor, Ellie (Daniela Melchior), is a much milder love interest than Kelly Lynch in the original. That’s because the screenplay downplays the romance and eliminates any sexual tension before the actors even have a chance to play it.
So, the modern Road House trades a little steam for more sweat and rowdy fun. It’s still an outrageous good time.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Running time: 102 minutes. PG (some thematic elements, rude humor). In theaters.
Long before ChatGPT was a household name, Hollywood had been making AI the villain for decades — from HAL 9000 to Skynet to Agent Smith.
Yet the most emotionally involving spin on the terrors of tech in ages arrives not from groundbreaking sci-fi, but the smart, wonderful and tremendously funny fifth “Toy Story” movie.
That’s a surprise, since it’s a film that I really hoped would never happen. After middling “4,” which was a giant step down from the heartbreaking third, the world was more than ready for Woody and Buzz to ride off into the sunset. Woody actually did.
Well, it’s good that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen got back behind the mike, because the digital age gives Pixar’s playthings a renewed sense of purpose and atypically high stakes. Usually the gang helps a young person stay in touch with their childhood. This time, they save one in progress.
That’s the formative years of little Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the girl who inherited the dolls from Andy (who’s now, like, 40) in the last movie. She’s 8 years old, paralyzed by shyness and totally friendless. Desperate, Bonnie begs her parents to buy her a Lilypad, an interactive touchscreen that’s all the rage at school.
Yes, the baddie that Woody (Hanks), Buzz (Allen) and Jessie (Joan Cusack) must face this time is an alarmingly cute tablet, voiced by Greta Lee.
So, rather than humanity’s fears of artificial intelligence taking control of the nuclear arsenal or replacing us with cyborgs, director Andrew Stanton’s “5” taps into a much more immediate concern: screens rewiring kids’ minds.
Much like when action figure Buzz arrived, sigh, 31 years ago, the toys are mortified by the mysterious intruder and her luminescent ilk. As they look across their neighborhood, all they can see for blocks are glowing blue windows with zombie youths staring into the 10×10 void.
The end is nigh, they think. How can a cowboy, cowgirl and a space cadet compete against a reactive mini-computer that connects a lonely child to the entire planet?
But these toys aren’t ready for the dark recesses of eBay just yet. They go head to head — or plastic to plastic — with Lilypad, whom Lee gives a voice that’s both bestie and “Mean Girls.”
You may recall lovebirds Woody and Bo Peep went off on their own at the end of the last chapter. Of course, they find their way back, but Jessie is running things now. That’s a refreshing and appropriate switch-up. Cusack’s maternal performance is better suited to this particular adventure than Hanks’ “old buddy, old pal” delivery.
After a sleepover mishap, Jessie winds up lost at another house — her first one, it turns out — where a girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) lives. And it’s there we meet perhaps the best new character in this franchise since 1995: Smarty Pants.
The real misfit toys aren’t the OG crew, we learn, but obsolete computer devices from the aughts. One is Conan O’Brien’s Smarty Pants, a hysterical, hyperactive box that teaches tykes how to use the toilet. He’s been powered down for years and therefore goes berserk when juiced up.
O’Brien is — and I’m sure he’d agree — a toy trapped in a man’s body. He’s practically typecasting. And his demented acting is so energetic and untethered, you can picture Disney security guards hauling him out of the recording studio. I mean that in a good way.
There’s also a lot of fun mined from a shipment of misplaced Buzzes. We check in on the look-alikes occasionally as they morph into a phalanx of determined Navy SEALs to eventually join Jessie and Co.
“Five” is arguably the first new “Toy Story” film to be both watched and understood by the kids of the 1995 original’s millennial audience. That shared experience is very moving all by itself.
But, even more poignantly, who can teach these young parents this vital lesson in 21st-century child-rearing better than their own toys?
3.5/5 stars
The notoriously treacherous hurdles that Hong Kong telecommunications company i-Cable used to put in front of customers looking to unsubscribe from its internet and pay-TV services throughout the 2000s and early 2010s provide the premise of this Kafkaesque comedy-drama – an alternately hilarious and heartbreaking case of raging against the system.
By Susan Granger
With the release of his 35th movie, it’s obvious that Steven Spielberg is not just a good story-teller, he’s a GREAT story-teller.
The suspenseful tale he spins this time is “Disclosure Day” about the U.S. government’s attempt to keep the truth about UFOs secret.
Sinister Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) heads WARDEX (Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction), a quasi-Defense Department agency from which cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) has stolen a powerful device of alien origin along with extensive classified information and video files.
Although his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) is held hostage by Scanlon’s underlings, Daniel manages to free her and get away, igniting a manhunt.
Supported by WARDEX’s Director of Biological Assets, paternal Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), whistleblower Daniel believes people have a right to know about the coverup, dating back to the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, paranoia and the Nixon Administration.
Meanwhile in the middle of a TV broadcast, Kansas City, Missouri, meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) suddenly begins making bizarre, guttural clicking sounds which make no sense – except to Daniel, who recognizes the alien code.
To the bewilderment of her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell’s son), Margaret can suddenly speak foreign languages – like Korean and Russian – and manipulate the minds of everyone she encounters.
What Daniel and Margaret have in common is a terrifying childhood trauma that neither wants to remember. To tell you more would ruin the film’s many white-knuckle surprises and insights about faith in a supreme deity and the philosophical essence of humanity.
Scripted by David Koepp from Steven Spielberg’s story, it revolves around a nefarious conspiracy, cloaked in sci-fi mystery, tracing back to “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of a Third Kind.” And it’s a timely topic since former President Obama said he believes aliens are real, prompting President Trump to accuse him of revealing “classified information.”
Sure – there are some gaping plot loopholes – but cinematographer Janusz Kaminski dazzles with a high-speed train chase. Buoyed by John Williams’ throwback score – on the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Disclosure Day” is an exciting 9, playing in theaters now.
Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in Journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has appeared on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie critic for many years. Read all her reviews at susangranger.com.
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