Review: "Roadhouse" (1989)

This is a very dumb movie but it falls into the unofficial category of New Yorkers who leave NYC for elsewhere and get into crazy adventures in culture clash. It also falls into the it's-so-bad-it's-good genre as well.

The plot is absurd as almost to defy description: it's about a bar bouncer in NYC named Dalton, played by the late great Patrick Swayze, who is such a great bouncer that a bar owner from Jasper, Missouri comes to town to recruit him (as if this is likely to happen). After a two minute conversation offering him a huge amount of money, the bar owner convinces Dalton to pull up stakes, move to Jasper, and start bouncing at his "roadhouse" bar. This bar is so out of control, with drunken brawls breaking out every other minute, that it's amazing it hasn't been closed down by the cops or board of health long ago. Anyway, after some starts and stop, Dalton brings order to the bar -- and he does this through the practice of de-escalation, using the sage wisdom he's gained from (I can't make this up) his PhD in Philosophy from NYU to break up bar fights with overwhelming calmness. 

But then, trouble: a greedy developer in town is threatening and exhorting local businesses, including the bar, trying to drive people out to create land for his ambitions. Dalton then comes to save not only the bar but the town -- and, of course, he falls in love with an extremely hot chick doctor along the way. 

There's lots of violence and flesh in this movie, along with a plot that, dumb as it is, never flags. See if with your friends on a night when you're all a little drunk and want a movie you can make fun of and yell at.

The most interesting thing to me is the performance by Patrick Swayze. He had just become a big star a couple years earlier in Dirty Dancing and this was the first big movie he was in after that. It was a less than impressive follow up but, the next year, Swayze would star in the mega-hit Ghost followed by other hits like Point Break and To Wong Fu ... (much better movies than this). What's great about him, both in this movie and others, was his amazing "presence", the combination of masculinity and sensitivity he projected. He was a great actor, a real star, and I don't think he ever got the critical recognition he deserved. Sadly he died in 2009 from cancer, a great talent gone before his time.