In this remake of the Patrick Swayze classic, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as disgraced MMA star Dalton. He beat an opponent to death in the ring. Making money by fighting in unsanctioned MMA bouts he’s hired by a woman to help clean up her roadhouse on Glass Key. He quickly discovers that the property is wanted by a bad man for some (fuzzy) reasons.
This film is an entertaining delight. This is a modern spin on an old Hollywood program film that is just supposed to make you forget about the world for a couple of hours. It has great characters, great action, wonderful one liners and a driving music score that drives it all forward. It was so much fun I refused to leave despite my dog begging to go out.
If there any problem it’s the script which is wildly uneven. Actually this is a perfect example of the modern trend of flushing narrative and characters for extended set pieces. Here we lose the characters and the light pencil line of the narrative thread for the action set pieces and Connor McGregor. While McGregor is very good and will make an excellent action star, here he's so far over the top as to be in another movie playing on Mars. As for the narrative- it never was really all that clear why the roadhouse was wanted by the bad guys or what exactly they were doing or why things happened- like a half burned book shop- reason just goes out the window in the drive just to kill Dalton. Actually everything goes out the window early since we don’t find out the bad guys reasons until so late in the game and are so half assed that there is no genuine suspense of tension.
Not that it matters because despite it’s Hollywood flaws the film is an action lovers dream and highly recommended
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