Great Scenes… Road House
Dalton is the best bouncer in the business. And here he tells us why. The late, great Patrick Swayze… we salute you.
Road House is an action-packed, fight-filled, drink-fuelled romp that preaches the maxim ‘Pain don’t hurt’ one moment and then has a man ripping an opponent’s throat out with his bare hands the next. Not for nothing is it directed by a man whose first name is Rowdy. It is, frankly, a pile of absolute nonsense and a bit of a joke. Yet none of these factors prevent it from being one of the funnest movies ever made.
Not only is it a movie of great taglines, it is also a movie with some fantastic scenes. Every one of its 3,952 bar fights is a joy to watch (who doesn’t want to see Sam Elliott hitting people?), each musical interlude from Jeff Healey is riveting and there is even a bit of token romance thrown into the mix.
But, of course, the movie is great because of two words: The Swayze. No one kicks redneck ass like Dalton, cinema’s greatest ever bouncer. If you plan on making trouble in the Double Deuce on a Friday night, you better have your fighting gloves on. Because Dalton takes no guff. In this scene he tells his new team how to treat their customers.
Road House has so many great lines of dialogue it’s almost criminal, and most of them turn up in this scene. Take your pick from ‘If somebody gets in your face and calls you a c**ksucker, I want you to be nice’, ‘It’s two nouns combined to illicit a prescribed response’ and ‘I want you to be nice, until it’s time to not be nice’.
All these gems are uttered with total conviction by Patrick Swayze – his ability to refrain from laughing was surely worthy of an Oscar nod. This scene is proof that he didn’t need to be dancing to be dazzling.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE PATRICK SWAYZE SCENES?
Ross v Ross 
September 15, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Swayze is forever. He will be sincerely missed. Great tribute, guys.
September 18, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Unlike every other teen-age girl on Earth, I didn’t love “Dirty Dancing” or “Ghost.” In fact, I wasn’t really much of a Swayze fan until his later films when he started taking crazy chances, like “To Wong Foo.” My absolute favorite performance, though? The SNL Chippendale’s audition with Chris Farley. That is how I choose to remember the Swayze.
March 9, 2023 at 9:38 pm
[…] While they stupidly wouldn’t admit to loving the wonderful Dirty Dancing, teenage boys – and, as Swayze’s legendary bouncer James Dalton calls them, “40-year-old adolescents” – worshipped Road House. […]