Road House 2: Last Call

I saw the behind the scenes featurette on the special edition of Roadhouse. My first thought was no way a sequel could be made with out Swayze, no way, then Jonathon Schaech came into my bar( yea, I was bouncing when Roadhouse came out then and now, how sad) this past weekend and we got a chance to talk. He is a real cool guy. A regular joe. Just on that meeting I rented the movie. I tell ya' it's not bad. The fight scenes are outstanding, although not too realist (not smart to kick high), but close , they are very well done. Schaech is very fast, I doubt they used camera tricks, he is a natural. The acting is good; I wish Jake would have gone a little bit more over the top. The women are all hot, the fight scene between the two females at the end, nice, very nice. All and all it's not bad, a worthy sequel and come on, Will Patton is in it, that is just icing on the cake.

Let me start by saying you know a film is poorly run when extras make the cover. With that said, anyone who says this is the worst film ever is being dramatic, and anyone who says that the film is great is completely delusional. The film "is what it is." And what is that... A modest budget ($4 million, I estimate) studio sequel. The film isn't terrible, but for Road House fans it will be a disappointment. And that brings me to problem one, just as Dirty Dancing wouldn't been what it was without Swayze, Road House isn't the same without him. The lead lacks depth, character, and likability to carry the film. I feel that the lead was poorly cast and the producers should have bent over backwards to get Patrick to do it if they were gonna do a sequel. The other cast was uneven with outstanding actors like Will Patton along side day players who couldn't act there way out of a paper bag. Busey, who I have seen do great characters seemed like he just mailed it in. Ellen was played well, except for not being believable at all as a bayou raised chick. Sherri, the DEA agent at the first bar was hot and a good actress, yet her part was awkwardly small and undeveloped. The writer totally missed all opportunities to add depth and interest to the story and characters. Instead opting for a base one dimensional film. Which leads me to the biggest problem, the script... I got a bad feeling when the credits rolled and there were three script writers separated by an "and" and an "&." It looked very amateur. And that is what the writing was. I heard the original script was better and then a rewrite was done and the hard core sucking began. Some cheezy parts of the film to watch for are... During the first undercover meeting, the obvious drug deal under the table. "Hey lets meet at a crowded nudey bar, I will pull a block of coke out of my jacket and you pull cash out then we will slide them under the cocktail table" WAIT! "Make sure to look cool when you look left and right to make sure no one is looking!" Second, I love it when someone gets shot in the chest and then you see him sitting up happy as a lark 10 minutes later. There are some nasty editing cuts towards the end of the film especially during fight scenes and when the main character is chasing thru doors and runs into a patron. Which brings me to the realism of the DEA training, I won't both to get technical... But jumping thru doors isn't standard training... Nor do typical female agents, who bust their butts to make it in a male oriented field, act like weak characters... Boring! Thanks for the chauvinistic view Heir Director. There is other stuff I could teach a course at a school about it... The sped up fighting, the cheezy dialogue, the recycled story... etc... But aside from all that you just cannot like ex-Mr. Applegate, he totally lacks the humble zen coolness that made Mr. Patrick Swayze such a bad ass. He just strikes me as one of those 5 foot nothing actors who think they are a bad ass, but just like Van Damnit he runs into a real bad ass (Chuck Zito in Van Don't case) and he gives him a lesson about "badassdom." Therefore, that I feel is the major linchpin of the film, if you are a bad ass you are a bad ass, you don't have to try. Example: Swayze! If you are a pretty boy who tries to hard to prove you are a bad ass among other things... Then well... You are why your audience, the Average Joe... Will not rent this film, and if they do they will write reviews like this.

What? No wait, no pun intended, also no last call for anything. Since there is a remake of the very first Road House on the way. This sequel in name only is really far inferior to the other movie. It does mirror some of the scenes of the first one, but does have an overall story, which I reckon it felt was missing from the other movie.

But what the other movie may have been "lacking" story wise, this lacks in almost everything else. Although it was made over a decade after the first one, the fight scenes seem worse. Ok so that may be a budget thing - but for a movie that relies on those ... well not just on those. We also get the nudity, the sex appeal and so forth. The machismo may not be as big as it was in the first one ... but while I really like Jonathan, he is no Patrick Swayze. Sorry to say - but I am certain most will agree.

This is not the worse movie ever, but with the title I reckon many expect more. Or will be satisfied because they expected way worse ... depends on you. I do expect way better things from Jake Gyllenhaal who may just have the charisma to pull of the remake all by himself.

This film essentially begins with a nightclub owner in rural Louisiana by the name of "Nate Tanner" (Will Patton) having some difficulties with a drug lord named "Wild Bill" (Jake Busey) who is determined to buy him out. Eventually, things turn violent and Nate is hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital. Since there is nobody else in the family to run the nightclub, Nate's nephew "Shane Tanner" (Johnathon Schaech) takes time off from his duties as a DEA agent in New York to fill in for him. Needless to say, he is not intimidated when Wild Bill comes around demanding that he sell the nightclub to him and that's when things soon get out-of-control. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a film that was not only highly predictable but also contained several ridiculous fight scenes involving certain characters who had sustained serious injuries days-if not minutes-beforehand. I also didn't quite care for the over-acting on the part of Jake Busey. Admittedly, I liked the Louisiana Bayou scenery and having two attractive actresses like Ellen Hollman (as Shane's girlfriend "Beau") and Marisa Quintanilla ("Nadja") certainly didn't hurt in that regard either. In any case, although this isn't a terrible movie by any means, the picture had too much of a cut-and-paste feel to it and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

"Direct-to-video" is a phrase that never sounds promising to the consumer unless its a direct-to-video sequel to something that went direct-to-video in the first place. Despite this, studios have insisted on releasing numerous direct-to-video sequels over the years to cult hits. I don't think it even needs to be mentioned that these sequels rank among some of the worst titles of all time, including THE HITCHER II, STARSHIP TROOPERS 2, and CRUEL INTENTIONS 3. It's fitting that ROAD HOUSE 2 was helmed by Scott Ziehl as he was also the man in charge of ruining the Cruel Intentions series. Like his entry in the Cruel Intentions trilogy, Ziehl takes elements that made the first ROAD HOUSE a great guy flick, and rehashes them with no success whatsoever. This is no sequel, this is a remake all the way. Various lines from the original are repeated, plot points cut and pasted, and scenes are replicated almost shot-for-shot from the first one. The one thing that could not be duplicated were the amazing fight scenes, which made ROAD HOUSE what it was. Here, we get clumsily directed fight sequences that are either too short or too long and seemingly planned out and shot within an hour. Compare that with its predecessor's fight scenes that look like they took months and months to prepare. Ziehl is capable of directing action as he did well with the 2001 remake of EARTH VS. THE SPIDER, but none of the talent shown there comes through in this mess. It's not completely his fault, as the screenplay is very, very poorly written and clunky. I don't care if something goes direct-to-video, a good script is still required. Someone should keep that mind while continuously churning these low-budget, direct-to-DVD movies out. Skip it entirely. 1/10