Conor McGregor Ruins A Perfectly Cromulent Jake Gyllenhaal Vehicle

Jake Gyllenhaal almost makes a 'Road House' remake seem like a good idea -- and then Conor McGregor shows up.

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Georges St. Pierre in Captain America: Winter Soldier, Randy Couture in Cradle 2 the Grave, Gina Carano in The Mandalorian — Hollywood’s infatuation with UFC champions and MMA stars is a cycle that seems to reset itself every five years or so. If a UFC champ can kick some ass and cut a slick promo, why can’t they growl some lines and perform some stunts in an action romp? Butts in seats are butts in seats, so the thinking seems to go.

Road House, now streaming on Prime (much to the chagrin of its director, Doug Liman, who wanted a theatrical release) was in fact at one point set to star Ronda Rousey in the Dalton role. That was before back-to-back devastating knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes and a subsequent move to the WWE (which wrestling fans seem to hate for some reason, I can never keep track of who they like and why). And so five years and change later, the project was reborn as a vehicle for Jake Gyllenhaal with Liman (Go, Edge of Tomorrow, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) on board to direct.

Sacrilegious as any remake of Road House (a movie close to this writer’s heart) would be, sticking Jake Gyllenhaal in it was a shockingly good decision. Gyllenhaal, who should probably have an Oscar by now (if not for Brokeback, for which he was nominated, certainly for Nightcrawler) is a brilliant actor who’s pretty enough, but not too pretty (his droopy eye already makes for plausible scar tissue), and, as he already showed in Jarhead and Southpaw, can get shredded when necessary.

He also has a peculiarly Swayze-like ability to move easily between B-movies and prestige projects with a level of commitment that never wavers. Dancing on that line between stupid and profound is exactly what made the original Road House so beloved (and I believe Road House director Rowdy Herrington knew exactly what he was doing in this regard). If ever there was a potential analogue for the kind of presence Patrick Swayze brought to cheesecake action movies in the late 80s and early 90s, it’s Jake Gyllenhaal. The main difference is that Gyllenhaal is probably a more competent actor, and I say that even acknowleding that Swayze’s landmark performances were underrated and genuinely awe-inspiring.

The new remake has, well… some of that. It’s strong enough that it feels like there was a decent idea for an action franchise in here, but all the UFC stuff feels like a vestigial organ half blocking its airway. Conor McGregor probably should’ve cut his teeth playing henchman number four in a few 50 Cent movies before we threw him straight into the role of main heavy. This kind of blatant stunt casting kills the baseline tonal consistency necessary to buy into any remake, and making matters worse, McGregor seems to have only one facial expression.

Gyllenhaal plays Elwood Dalton (as opposed to Swayze’s James Dalton, not sure why that needed updating) who we meet during an unsanctioned “smoker” in a sawdust arena. Think hay bales, people waving around cash bets and shouting — the whole deal from the Guile level of Street Fighter minus the guy in the background who looked like he was jacking off. Frankie, played by Daily Show alum Jessica Williams, is there to scout Carter Ford, played by Post Malone (Carter, Elwood… everyone has last names for first names in this universe, nary a Dave, Chris, Kevin, or Stu).

“Carter Ford” is doughy but menacing, and heavily tattooed (obvi), taking on all comers while playing to the crowd. Post Malone is a compelling presence even without saying much, though his fight scene has so much bizarrely shitty-looking CGI that one has to assume Malone was so bad at doing the stunts he was supposed to that some poor VFX team was left to try to fix it all in post. It ends up lookling like mediocre gameplay footage from a UFC videogame, with obvious blurring and too many cuts.

Carter gets a mysterious challenger in the form of Gyllenhaal, whose very presence is intimidating enough that when he pulls off his black hoodie revealing himself, Carter storms off rather than fight him. Seeing this, Frankie pivots, figuring this hoodie guy is probably the one to recruit.

She offers Dalton 20 grand ($5,000 a week for a month’s work) to come clean up her rowdy honky tonk in the Florida Keys. It’s a pretty setting that Liman and his cinematographer Henry Braham (whose less FX-heavy work, like 2016’s Tarzan, has looked great) shoot beautifully, and Liman probably knows South Florida well from his drug runner biopic, American Made. That particular stew of small-town tyrants, beautiful women, people who act psychotic in bars, and possible drug connections required for Road House canon make the most sense in South Florida. Liman briefly succeeds in making a Road House remake seem like a not-so-terrible idea.

Never once does Frankie nor Dalton use the phrase “Cooler.” Gone too are Dalton’s aphorisms and life philosophies, like “pain don’t hurt,” “be nice… until it’s time to not be nice,” etc. I have mixed feelings about the remake not attempting to recreate any of this; it probably would’ve felt wrong no matter how well set up. And part of me loves the fact that Nü Dalton’s “dark secret” is literally “a UFC fight gone awry.” That’s stupid and funny and brilliant in exactly the way the original Road House was.

I wrote before the film came out that “MMA fighing as a career” and world famous “coolers” traveling across the Southeast cleaning up rowdy gin joints with eastern wisdom and deftly delivered face kicks cannot coexist in the same universe. Perhaps understandably, Liman’s Road House remake (with script by Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry) doesn’t try to make them. Dalton still loves coffee and sleeps only in old cars or old boats, and Gyllenhaal more than pulls off Dalton’s genial insouciance without parroting his same trailer lines. It’s no small feat.

Road House’s original bad guy was an ascotted petty tyrant played by Ben Gazzara, ruling Jasper, Missouri with an iron fist and attempting to squeeze the roadhouse’s owner on liquor prices (simple! effective!). This time around, we get Billy Magnussen (who’s actually a pretty great actor, with solid turns in Game Night and Ingrid Goes West) as Brandt, a corrupt Nepo Baby developer (with possible ties to drug smuggling!) who wants to bulldoze Road House and put up a luxury hotel. Brandt’s faceless father is still trying to pull strings from behind bars, and he’s also in cahoots with a corrupt local Sheriff, Big Dick (Joaquim de Almeida) — who is also the father of Dalton’s doctor love interest, Ellie (Daniela Melchior).

A rift develops between Brandt and his father (who, again, we never see), the latter of whom sends a psychotic fixer named “Knox” down to Glass Key after Brandt keeps failing to shut down the Road House. Played by Conor McGregor with stomach tattoos that say “KNOX KNOX KNOX” matching his “KNOX” necklace, we meet Knox as he walks out of an apartment in Italy, bare naked but for his boots, with an extended shot of his bare ass. We’re sort of left to infer that he’s just bedded a woman and left too quickly to get his clothes, as he struts down the street in a more juiced up version of his familiar foytin’ oyrishman walk.

It’s one of two extended shots of McGregor’s bare ass in Road House, which feels less like a funny joke than a desperate attempt to find an angle where he wasn’t make the same stupid facial expression. That being a shit-eating grin that ends up conveying “just happy and sort of bashful to be on set” more so than any character choice. McGregor has his signature, elbow-splayed strut and maniacal smile, which are both unsettling in a way that’s theoretically perfect for this role… only that’s all he has.

He smirks and struts through the entire role, an affected face to go with his affected pose and a grab bag of arbitrary line reads, with absolutely nothing genuine or revealing peeking through the costume party mask. He’s meant to come off mocking and intimidating but instead feels like he’s playing the sluttiest twink in a gay porn movie and every time there’s no moneyshot it feels anti-climactic (pun intended? I’m not even sure). Now, I’ve left weddings early to watch Connor McGregor fight. I’ve shared memes based on his press conferences. It’s undeniable that the camera loves Conor McGregor, that’s why he’s filthy rich and a huge star. Yet somehow none of it translates to an actual movie role, one of the worst athlete attempts at acting I’ve ever seen, and I’ve watched Dennis Rodman try to pull off a buddy action comedy opposite Jean Claude Van Damme.

To be fair, not all of it is even McGregor’s fault. His character is only one of at least three too many underdeveloped and totally unnecessary bad guys. Billy Magnussen as an evil failson developer? Sure! McGregor as a henchman sent by Magnussen’s unseen father? Uh… okay. Oh, and a corrupt Sheriff who is also frenemies with Magnussen and has a difficult relationship with his daughter, who is also a doctor and the film’s love interest! Also there are some drug cartels that may be involved! It’s enough to make you yearn for the simplicity of a megalomaniacal liquor distributor.

McGregor’s much-too-large role I suppose can be written off as the UFC’s price for giving the production their full blessing and letting them film at a UFC event. The justification for his character in the story seems, like most of the last act of the movie, wildly overwritten for very little payoff. The stunt casting keeps killing the story’s momentum. If they could’ve combined Post Malone’s ability to sort of act with Conor McGregor’s ability to sort of do stunts we might’ve had something.

The last thing you want to be thinking during a riff on a white hat/black hat western is “why are they fighting?” and that’s the operative thought during most of the action sequences. Even with too many villains, one big setpiece comes down to the Road House’s clientele just shouting “bar fight!” and punching each other like a redneck The Purge (a movie I’d probably watch, just not the movie they were making). Meanwhile, Knox stalks through smashing stuff with a big round titanium driver, which seems like a weird choice of weapon when the much heavier and sharper irons, wedges, and putters were right there. (Do you even golf, bro?)

The ending arguably wasn’t the strongest part of the original either, but it at least had the benefit of general coherence. This remake was gestating for more than a decade and still comes off feeling slapped together like an overdue homework assignment. There’s probably a great movie to be made starring a dehydrated-within-an-inch-of-his-life Jake Gyllenhaal smirking and maiming rednecks while befriending precocious girls and wearing Hawaiian shirts, it’s just not this one.