2.33:1 DVD capture: Road House

ROAD HOUSE 2 ZERO STARS (out of four) Image A Sound A

ROAD HOUSE (1989) DELUXE EDITION Image B Sound B- Extras B+

Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada July 10, 2006|Set in the Louisiana bayou (they could've called this Wild Things 4 and no one would've been any the wiser), Road House 2 stars rent-a-cipher Billy Zane Jonathon Schaech (who also co-wrote the screenplay (!)) as Shane Tanner, the Patrick Swayze character's own private immaculate conception, a DEA agent so badass (read: off-puttingly cocky) he goes undercover in a T-shirt with "DEA" splayed on it. When bad guys led by Jake Busey--who began his screen career by playing the Grim Reaper and now all but embodies said harbinger of doom--put Shane's uncle Nate (Will Patton, still protesting his gay bureaucrat from No Way Out too much) in the hospital for not selling his bar, Shane takes over Nate's establishment The Black Pelican, which involves continually fending off Busey's goons, following a trail of breadcrumbs back to his dad Dalton's murderer (! and see below), and flirting with an SUV-driving woman (Ellen Hollman) as narcissistic as her name, Beau, would imply. Road House 2: Bouncer Boogaloo is too chaste and tedious and not organically or consistently campy enough to facilitate a good MST3K'ing; it sits there like a dead frog waiting for the electrodes. According to a cross-promotional featurette on the new Deluxe Edition DVD of Road House, the filmmakers believe they've pimped the ride of the previous film, but it's the original's old-school charms that have endeared it to legions of fans. Confession: for the longest time, I've been jotting down ideas for a sequel to Road House (think Shane meets The Color of Money) in the vain hope that they would one day fall on receptive ears; if you ask me, it's among the few catalogue titles Sony has chosen to stigmatize with a dtv prostitution that's more than earned--through an ironic but devoted cult following (it retroactively became the Snakes on a Plane of its day)--the merit badge of a big-screen continuation. (The prestige of which just might have lured Patrick Swayze back into the fold, à la Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.) Part of the problem is that any and all of Road House's franchise potential is wrapped up in Swayze's mulleted frame: take him out of the equation and you're crediting the original's popularity to that great American pastime of bouncer'ing. The absence of the palpably-charismatic Swayze in Road House Reloaded leaves a crater that only dilates thanks to the lip-service paid to his iconic Dalton, whom we learn went out like some punk (shot to death in his living room, Bugsy Siegel-style, after borrowing his son's car--in one sentence a mythic figure is totally and thoroughly emasculated) in the interim, thus tainting the movie with a youthful arrogance it fails to justify time and time again. It's one kind of presumptuousness for Schaech to try to fill Swayze's steel-toed boots, another altogether to get Thomas L. Callaway and Edgar Burcksen to pinch hit for cinematographer Dean Cundey and editor Frank J. Urioste, respectively. Son of Road House arrives on DVD in conjunction with the aforementioned DE of Road House. The 1.83:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is swell with a lamentably clear Dolby Digital 5.1 mix to match--given that it was produced for the home market, the post-production values are exceedingly high. Trailers for Freedomland, Hollow Man 2, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Ultraviolet round out the disc. Meanwhile, Road House dumps the pan-and-scan version of the previous release (while recycling its DVNR-heavy 2.33:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer and Dolby 2.0 Surround audio) to accommodate some overdue supplementary material, starting with two feature-length commentaries. Getting the first track to himself, director Rowdy Herrington isn't the most engaging tour guide: often drowned out by the movie's soundtrack, he interlaces a technical discussion with the odd production anecdote, such as how Sam Kinison had a hand in Lynch's casting. On a second track, Kevin Smith and long-time producer Scott Mosier snark their way through the film in a predictable but no less entertaining fashion, i.e. by harping on the film's homoeroticism. They're funny, but not as funny as the uncredited author(s) of the subtitle-based "trivia" track, an increasingly-dada comedy routine that uses the screen refresh to pace its zingers accordingly (e.g. "The bola tie was made the official neckwear of Arizona in 1971...prompting a mass exodus"). Two featurettes also adorn the platter: "On the Road House" (17 mins.), a retrospective making-of with Swayze, Lynch, R. Lee Ermey-lookalike Herrington, actor Marshall Teague, martial arts advisor Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, and musician/actor Jeff Healy; and "What Would Dalton Do?" (12 mins.), a collection of stories from real-life bouncers (or "coolers," as they're now pretentiously called) that may be of interest to people in the trade. An articulate Swayze has evidently subjected Dalton to so much post-game analysis that, again, it's a real shame he wasn't able to reprise the role. Coating her answers in a thick layer of sarcasm, Lynch seems barely able to hide her contempt for the film, but at least it acts as a tonic to all the self-congratulation. Trailers for "The James Bond Ultimate Collection", Population 436, and Freedomland finish off the platter.-Bill Chambers ROAD HOUSE 2: TWO SHADES OF POO Running Time 86 minutes; MPAA R; Aspect Ratio(s) 1.83:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced; Languages E DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround; CC Yes; Subtitles English, French; DVD-9; Region One; Sony

Arnold Schwarzenegger bowing out of the sequel to Predator was not nearly as detrimental to the project as the departure of director John McTiernan, who, off shooting The Hunt for Red October, was substituted with former "Good Morning America" stage manager Stephen Hopkins, a man determined to prove that the crappiness of Predator 2 was no fluke with his follow-ups A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Judgment Night, and Lost in Space, a seventy-five million dollar excuse to get into Heather Graham's pants. His specialty dousing a scene in either red, blue, or orange, he is simply skill-less and tin-eared, a filmmaker of no value to cinema whatsoever (TV, on the other hand--he helmed many an episode of the wonderful "24"), and in the case of Predator 2, given to a default unscrupulous depiction of the media (Morton Downey Jr. appears as a tabloid newsman) despite his experiences in telejournalism.

Predator 2 relocates the titular hunter-alien from the Central American jungle to "Los Angeles, 1997," a world terrorized by gang violence. Filling in for Ah-nold, Danny Glover plays a police lieutenant in one of the worst performances anyone has ever given as an officer of the law: he's hysterical at times and skittish always--perhaps the Predators eventually spare his life because they mistake him for a brother from another planet. (Jar Jar Binks, maybe.) Glover knows there is a new menace on the loose, unless it's the Jamaican alley-dwellers decapitating one another, but you know how it goes: for attempting actual police work between shoot-outs, movie cops are punished by their superiors. Told to stay out of his way by Gary Busey, who shouldn't have made that left turn at Albuquerque, Glover figures out what Busey already knows: that there's an extra-terrestrial on the prowl, and he's gonna get it, suckah.

If the film has anything going for it, it's a sense of humour about the American love affair with firearms: the second-best scene in the picture takes place aboard a subway car where the entire load of passengers brandishes guns, in perfect synchronization, at a mild provocation. In the best scene, period, an elderly lady shields herself from the Predator (Kevin Peter Hall) with a broom, and somehow looks better-protected than Glover with his gleaming pistol. But Predator 2 ultimately has neither a single passable performance (well, maybe the old broad) nor racial sensitivity (Hopkins explicitly equates the Predator and Rastafarians through visual puns). It wants, nay, begs for the social commentary and nuclear terror of its predecessor, even though it was scripted by the same pair of screenwriting brothers, Jim Thomas and John Thomas.

In some ways, Road House is more in the tradition of the Flint films than Reagan-era sleaze, the multiple stripteases and homophobic asides aside: Dalton is a renaissance man used like a trump card on the country-and-western dive circuit. A philosophy major, he practices Tai Chi, reads Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall), sews his own wounds, and dances the cha-cha. Okay, he doesn't really dance the cha-cha--but he could. The arguments he has with his girlfriend are over whether he should've ripped that guy's throat out and tossed it into the lake, breakfast consists of jam and cigarettes, a place where they have to "sweep up the eyeballs" sounds to him like an appetizing job destination--Dalton is more than a man's man, he is The Swayze Whisperer, all sinew and mousse and telestic brooding. He will sanitize the Double Deuce so that its blind guitarist (real-life sightless axeman Jeff Healey) can fear not the flying beer bottle. All hail Road House!

Fox's DVD release of Predator 2 presents the Super35 film in a widescreen transfer (enhanced for 16x9 displays) close to full gate at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, matching it better to the original Predator than the cramped-looking 2.35:1 LaserDisc. Video quality is not great, soft and low in contrast, with shadow detail going to mush in instances of an intense primary colour. A Dolby Digital 5.1 remaster is much less active than that of the first film, feeble when it comes to gunshots. Two dated featurettes, one a six-minute untitled rehash of the plot, the other a barely educational overview of the creature design ("Predator 2: Creating the Ultimate Hunter"), plus Predator 2's trailer round out the disc.

MGM offers Road House on a double-sided DVD with 2.33:1 anamorphic widescreen and pan-and-scan video transfers. Dean Cundey's brightly-lit cinematography seems to draw attention to a lack of crisp definition in the presentation (though some filtering has obviously been applied), but it's nice to have visual information restored--the fight scenes are more coherent in widescreen. The Dolby Surround soundtrack is loud though shrill, not as strong in bass as, surprisingly, of all things, MGM's just-issued The Woman In Red. The rear channel is good for ambience during Swayze and Lynch's bump-and-grind. Nothing rounds out the disc, save a trailer for Road House and a page of arbitrary studio recommendations.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
108 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
French Dolby Surround,
Spanish Stereo
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
Fox

Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada
or Compare Prices

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
114 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.33:1, 16x9-enhanced/
Pan-and-scan 1.33:1
Languages
English Dolby Surround,
French Dolby Surround,
Spanish Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
DVD-10
Region One
MGM

the critic

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Published: February 4, 2003