Last Thursday,
Road House
, a new version of the 1989 film of the same name, arrived on Amazon Prime Video, this time with Jake Gyllenhaal as the protagonist and filmmaker Doug Liman behind the camera.
The
remake
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 the of the Irish mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, UFC champion, and the profile of the production, with a budget of 85 million dollars and A-list 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: Hard
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 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.
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“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], which in turn drew on
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.”
Patrick Swayze in a promotional image for 'By Profession: Hard'. Aaron Rapoport (Getty Images)
Patrick Swayze in 'By Profession: Hard'. United Artists (Getty Images)
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 fell to choreographer Benny Urquidez, alias
The Jet,
a frequent collaborator of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, who 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, an American pioneer of
full contact
, was so excited by Patrick Swayze's performance and physical potential that he tried to convince him to start a career in
kickboxing
.
Kick to glory
Patrick Swayze not only did not dedicate himself to
kickboxing,
he also did not have a long career in action films.
After the enormous fame that the actor obtained for
Dirty Dancing
,
By profession: he
knew how to exploit that attractiveness 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 tranquility outside the genre and, after rejecting 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 the cakes to bequeath another instant classic,
They Call Him Bodhi
(1991), where the mystique from which he had built Dalton in
By Profession: Hard
exploded completely in the form of a surfing guru.
Actor Patrick Swayze photographed in Los Angeles in 1989.Aaron Rapoport (Corbis via Getty Images)
Alcoholism gradually kept Swayze from acting, and he died in 2009 from pancreatic cancer.
“There was a truck movie in the late nineties called
Black Dog
[1998] that was 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: Duro 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 nothing less than
Limit: 48 Hours
(1982),
Commando
(1985 ),
Lethal Weapon
(1987),
Predator
(1987) and
Die Hard
(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 They went further: his idea was the most famous phrase in the film, “In prison I have fucked guys like you” (softened in the Spanish dubbing to “In jail I have fucked guys like 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, said that his mother jumped in the seat and shouted “That's my boy!”
when he heard the phrase at the preview.
Patrick Swayze shirtless and Kelly Lynch in 'By Profession: Hard'.IFTN (United Archives/IFTN / Cordon Press)
Patrick Swayze taking a break from banging in 'Of Profession: Hard'. IFTN (United Archives/IFTN / Cordon Press)
Reviews were not very positive at the time of release.
Roger Ebert was one of the most accommodating, but not very: he said that 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 release, it was the film most watched.
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 for
By Profession: Hard
, 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've never seen anyone enjoy
The Job: It's Hard
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 New York police 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 officers were watching
By Profession: Tough
as a solution to a crisis of institutional racism and abuse of authority did not please citizens so much, and then-mayor Bill DeBlasio had to come out to assure that the program was not exclusively on that.
Jake Gyllenhaal in the 'remake' of 'Of Profession: Hard' that Prime Video.MGM has released (ZUMAPRESS.com / Cordon Press)
The new
Road House (Profession: Hard)
has been released with controversy: its direct arrival on a
streaming
platform 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.
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