Tag Archives: Patrick Swayze

film report: Roadhouse

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Being on something of a Swayze bender, I decided to rewatch the 1989 throat-ripping classic, Roadhouse. Let’s see how much of the plot you can deduce from these screenshots:

 

So basically, Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is a cooler, a lead-bouncer, who is propositioned to sort out a violent shithole called The Double Deuce, “the kind of place where they sweep up the eyeballs after closing”. He immediately fires a bunch of degenerates, including an amusing character who fucks a 80s blonde in the backroom, “you gonna be my regular Saturday night thing” and then protests “I’m on my break!” when Dalton sticks his head in to fire him. Dalton rents a room in a farm and does tai chi style exercises half-naked, but also immediately lights a cigarette upon awaking,

because this is a 80s action film. The farm is opposite a villa owned by the villainous Brad Wesley

– one of the greatest of 80s villains – played by Coach Red Pill:

There are loads of 80s titties and 80s blondes, and Coach Red Pill’s henchmen are an assemblage of fired maths teachers, fat American slobs, and homosexual rapists. One of them drives a monster truck.

So anyway, Coach Red Pill demands tribute payments from local store owners and Dalton ends up fighting his various henchmen and saving the town. CRP makes a great villain, one of these bad guys who simply enjoys life and enjoys his villainy – he has no rancour, no ill will, he’s just a local kingpin and relishes the role. Dalton calls in assistance from the legendary cooler Wade Garrett,

played by Sam Elliott. I believe we have here the key to 80s splendour – the supporting cast must be at least as good as the supposed protagonist.

The script is particularly memorable, with zingers every couple of minutes, and a great deal of homoeroticism. The film closed out the 80s, the greatest decade known to man.

It might just become your regular Saturday night thing.

film report: Point Break (1991)

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I was surprised how well this early 90s action flick held up; I would now regard it as one of the best action films I’ve seen. Keanu Reeves is the star, a FBI agent called Johnny Utah going after a gang of bank robbers; he is here very much in his 90s role as a kind of blank, a “neo”, likeable enough but not to be compared to his profoundly human old dog John Wick; the real power of the film is from the perfect balance of the almost-not-there Reeves and the brilliant supporting cast, e.g. Mister Joshua himself, the excellent Gary Busey as Utah’s older partner who theorises that the bank robbers are in fact surfers, leading to Utah embedding himself in the surfer community.

And then of course there is Dalton, Patrick Swayze, surely one of the most beautiful men, the most poetic, sensitive, violent, spiritual. Here he’s actually called Boddhi and is the head of the surfers, full of gems of hippy wisdom but also perfectly capable of delivering the meritorious beatdown.

There are also little cameos, e.g. Tom Sizemore as an undercover DEA agent, Anthony Kiedis (Swan from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) as a belligerent surfer, and a great John C McGinley (Sgt O’Neill from Platoon) as a the obligatory 80s stupid police boss.

It is wonderfully directed by Katherine Bigelow, with adroit and imaginative camerawork. She has the sensitivity to let the characters breathe and be complexly human & brutal. There is a rich humanity to the film, with even quite minor characters given a convincing, individual presence & magic.

The whole hippy surfer thing, about escaping, Matrix-like, from the workaday system is well-handled; for all its evident silliness, somehow it seems plausible here, with Patrick Swayze talking the talk and surfing the surf. In these moments, you can believe in the Männerbund, in the conflict & confrontation of a man with his fate, and his eventual enlightenment & release, even if in death.