Pun Salad

OK, the Official Pun Salad Rating of 4 stars to this movie is perhaps overly generous. But I was totally in the mood for a movie like this.

Heavily-muscled Jake Gyllenhaal plays Elwood Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter now making his living from less official bouts. In the amusing opening scene, he picks up prize money by default, because the guy we've just seen beat the crap out of someone takes one look at Dalton and says: nope. Dalton is spotted by the lovely Frankie, who's looking for a bouncer to restore a modicum of sanity to her bar (conveniently named "Road House") located on Florida's (fictional) Glass Key.

Dalton is affable and a gifted wisecracker, but we also learn that he is teetering on the edge of suicide, thanks to a bit of self-discovery we don't learn about until later in the movie. So he takes up Frankie's offer, has some fun taking out some violent biker trash, gets to know the offbeat and colorful inhabitants. But it turns out that Frankie's been keeping a key (heh) bit of information from him: a ruthless criminal, protected by the local cops, is behind all the Road House violence (well, most of it) and he will stop at nothing to carry out his evil designs.

The special effects and fight scenes are very impressive. Jake Gyllenhaal does his usual job of bringing believability and sympathy to his character. And, hey, Joaquim de Almeida plays… yep, another slimeball, but one with a smidgen of conscience.