Last Thursday it arrived on Amazon Prime Video Road House (Profession: tough), a new version of the 1989 film of the same name, this time with Jake Gyllenhaal as the protagonist and filmmaker Doug Liman behind the camera. He remake It retains the title, a similar plot and the focus on the action, but in scale there is a visible difference: the fights are larger, the settings are more spectacular, for the final thug a figure like that of the fighter has been recruited Irish mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor, UFC champion, and the profile of the production, with a budget of $85 million and top Hollywood figures, is evidently higher. An ambitious project with various resources to satisfy the expectations of the large number of admirers of the original, more modest, temporary and with fewer pretensions, but which, after an acceptable run at the box office, forged a legend in video stores and after-dinner reruns. . The type of classic that, in short, can only be faced by bringing out your entire arsenal.
With Patrick Swayze as an absolute star after triumphing two years earlier with Dirty Dancing (1987), By profession: tough It told the story of a bar bouncer, James Dalton, famous throughout the United States for the extreme efficiency with which he carries out his job. A man hires his services to help him clean up trash from a bar he owns in a small town in Missouri. Dalton, in addition to being a brilliant distributor of slaps, is a no less brilliant doctor in Philosophy (plot aspect omitted in the 2024 version), who abandoned the discipline when he did not find “the answers he was looking for,” as he explains in a scene from the movie. Those who do find all the answers in the world are the vandals who approach Dalton's domain wanting a fight. The conflict escalates to the point that the hero ends up having to dismantle the local mafia, based on the corruption of the police force, in order to successfully fulfill his pacifying mission.
“Things as they are, it's a flat and simple movie about a guy who goes to a town to beat up people, who saves people from the rich guy on duty because he can handle the bad guys and who takes the girl,” he admits to ICON. Álvaro Ruiz de Gauna, author of the book The action cinema that is no longer made: 50 films that marked an era (2017, Dolmen Editorial). “But it's different from other Stallone and Schwarzenegger shoot-em-up movies. As eighties as it is, it is a bit different from what was done in its time because it is like a western brought to the present. If you think about it, it's the same argument as The pale rider [1985]who in turn drank Deep roots [1955]. A gunman, in this case a nightclub bouncer, who goes to a typical Midwestern town and frees it from the evil landowner who has everyone in fear.”
Another distinctive element that Ruiz de Gauna points out is the quality of his action. “He has fights that are very good, especially the one between Patrick Swayze and the main henchman, quite raw and realistic. In addition, there are knife blows, the protagonist after a few blows gets tired, sweats, and it hurts. He is not a superhero, like other action characters,” says the writer. Much of the responsibility lay with the choreographer Benny Urquidez, alias The Jet, A regular collaborator with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, he tried to import the forceful and hyper-technical style of Hong Kong martial arts cinema into the film. The actors filmed the fights without doubles, according to supporting actor Sam Elliott, who stated: “They were kicking my ass the entire movie.” Urquidez, American pioneer of full contactwas so excited by Patrick Swayze's performance and physical potential that he tried to convince him to start a career in the kick boxing.
Kick to glory
Patrick Swayze not only did not dedicate himself to kick boxing, Nor would he have a long career in action films. After the enormous fame that the actor obtained for Dirty Dancing, By profession: tough knew how to exploit that attraction as an attraction. Apart from beatings, there was a love affair with actress Kelly Lynch and a high number of shirtless scenes. Even the slogan joked with the title that had launched him to stardom: “The dancing's over. Now, it gets dirty.” An injury while filming led Swayze to seek peace outside the genre and, after rejecting both roles in Tango and Cash (1989) and Predator 2 (1990), he starred in the film that confirmed him as a romantic leading man: Ghost (1990). However, he would promptly return to cakes to bequeath another instant classic, They call him Bodhi (1991), where the mystique from which he had built Dalton of By profession: tough He totally exploded in the form of a surf guru.
Alcoholism gradually kept Swayze from acting, and he died in 2009 from pancreatic cancer. “He has a truck movie called at the end of the nineties. Black Dog [1998] which is entertaining. It's okay, I laugh a lot with her, but it's true that there it already seemed like Patrick Swayze was accepting any role,” says Ruiz de Gauna.
By profession: tough came sponsored by who was, from the economic side, the great magician of action cinema in that decade in the United States, Joel Silver, who had just produced no less than Limit: 48 hours (1982), Commando (1985), lethal weapon (1987), Predator (1987) and The jungle of crystal (1988). In addition to hiring choreographer The Jet, Silver brought with him the editors of most of those films and one of Hollywood's most experienced stunt coordinators, Charlie Picerni, although, according to director Rowdy Herrington, the producer's great contributions went further: his idea was the most famous line in the film, “In jail I have fucked guys like you” (softened in the Spanish dubbing to “In jail I have fucked guys like you” you”), which one of the henchmen snaps at Dalton before he kills him by ripping out his throat. Marshall Teague, the actor in charge of delivering the line of dialogue, counted that his mother jumped in the seat and shouted “That's my boy!” her when she heard the phrase at the preview.
Reviews were not very positive at the time of release. Roger Ebert was one of the most accommodating, but not much either: he said it was enjoyable if seen “with the right attitude,” but that it was on the border between “good-bad movies” and purely bad ones. However, this did not prevent the film from working well commercially, nor from finding an even larger audience year after year thanks to the popularization of cable television in the United States. In 2020, 31 years after its premiere, It was the most watched movie. Ben Gazzara, who plays the villain, also said that it was the film of his that he had re-watched the most. In an episode of the series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013), chef Anthony Bourdain declared his admiration by By profession: tough, a cult that his diner, actor Bill Murray, also claimed to follow. “You can spend your life analyzing this movie. The more times you see it, the more unknowns arise. It's fantastic, it's tremendously underrated,” the chef proclaimed. “I have never seen anyone enjoy By profession: tough as much as I enjoy it,” Murray responded.
The film, which also contains a monster truck sequence and live performances by renowned Canadian guitarist Jeff Healy, was used by the NYPD to teach diplomacy to 22,000 officers, as one of the mandatory retraining measures in response to the homicide by asphyxiation of African-American Eric Garner. In the scene used, Patrick Swayze's character taught his bar companions the three rules he followed to avoid violent outbursts: expect the unexpected, don't start anything, and be kind. Obviously, the revelation that the police were watching By profession: tough as a solution to a crisis of institutional racism and abuse of authority, it did not please citizens so much, and the then mayor Bill DeBlasio had to come out to ensure that the program did not consist exclusively of that.
The new one Road House (Profession: tough) has been released with controversy: its direct arrival on a platform of streaming has outraged the director, Doug Liman, who has refused to promote it, and the producer Joel Silver himself, fired by Amazon for less clear reasons (the company claims that it was due to verbal abuse of two workers, while the producer's entourage attributes it to his refusal to use artificial intelligence during the strikes last year). The film, however, has received a significantly more favorable critical reception. Now the difficult part remains: lasting in the collective memory far beyond what anyone would dare to foresee.
You can follow ICON on Facebook, x, instagram,or subscribe here to the Newsletter.
#Simple #Guy #Punches #Movie #Unexpected #Classic