The Road House remake has yet to debut but a lot has already been said about the upcoming Prime Video film. The director has made his frustration with the studio known after Road House was not given a theatrical release, and now we might know why Doug Liman believes this is one of his best films. Jake Gyllenhaal says the movie’s action was done in an entirely new way that is apparently “groundbreaking.”
Speaking with our sister site Total Film (via GamesRadar) Jake Gyllenhaal said that director Doug Liman wanted to film the action in Road House in a way that was apparently somehow different than what we would be used to. It certainly sounds pretty incredible to hear the actor tell it. Gyllenhaal said…
[Director Doug Liman] always does action in a different way, and he came to me and said, 'I want to do fights in a way that has never been done before.' He became pretty much obsessed with how the punches would land, and the kicks would land. He didn’t want them to be performed in the way that we have for audiences in the past with that kind of fighting.
While Gyllenhaal doesn’t go into any specifics regarding exactly how these fight scenes were filmed, it certainly sounds like they did something differently. The original Road House was a pretty straightforward ‘80s action movie. The fight scenes are solid, but nothing to write home about, but not so here it would seem.
It would be one thing if it were just Jake Gyllenhaal hyping the movie’s action, but stunt coordinator Garret Warren backs him up, saying that these new techniques, whatever they are, are used in every fight scene in the film, and calling them “groundbreaking.” Warren said…
[I thought] we'll do this magic trick once or twice, maybe three times. But no, not with Doug. Doug wanted to do it the whole time. The shots were never cut. When you see this movie, the fights are way beyond any fight that has ever been filmed in cinema history. This is something that is groundbreaking.
While fans of the original Road House, or just action movies in general, were certainly looking forward to checking out the remake, this puts an entirely new spin on it. Now Road House isn’t looking like just a solid action movie, but something that could change action movies as a genre.
Road House has been a somewhat controversial film since Doug Liman publicly announced he would not be attending the premiere. He feels the movie should have been given a theatrical release, and if the action is that impressive, it's not hard to understand why he might feel way. Although some have called Liman disrespectful for publicly airing his grievances.
The Road House trailer shows us some of the film's action, and while nothing we see there looks all that different, it's possible the unique elements are intentionally being held back. Audiences at SXSW will be the first to see these new action scenes when the movie debuts there later this week. The rest of us will have to wait until the Road House release date of March 21.
