This Remake Has No Business Being This Good

About 5 minutes into the brand new remake of Highway Home, its hero comes near killing himself by intentionally parking his automotive on some prepare tracks as a locomotive comes barreling via an intersection. On the final minute he alters his thoughts. The hero survives by the thinnest of margins; so skinny, actually, that the again of his beater will get clipped and totaled by the prepare.

There could also be a metaphor in there someplace. A remake of Highway Home — any remake of Highway Home — must be a prepare wreck. If I had been requested “What’s the easiest way to remake Highway Home?” a number of years in the past, my response would have been “To not even try such a ridiculous concept.”

The unique Highway Home is without doubt one of the strangest movies ever made by a mainstream Hollywood studio. It might solely have been produced within the Eighties, and it solely works (“works”) as a foolish, weird, painfully earnest relic of a bygone period the place bouncers have been handled just like the world’s greatest celebrities, and other people have been so determined for a spot to drink that they’d willingly go to probably the most harmful bar on the planet, evening after evening, figuring out full effectively they could be stabbed simply to get a shot of whisky. (I ought to be aware that the whole lot I do know in regards to the Eighties I discovered from watching Highway Home. If that is inaccurate, I apologize.)

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It is a film the place Patrick Swayze propensity in direction of ripping dudes’ throats out is handled as each tragic backstory and operating subplot, and the place a person getting squished by a falling polar bear barely makes the record of the craziest onscreen moments. How do you remake that?

Improbably, the creators of the brand new Highway Home, which goes straight to streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video, pulled it off. Their creation is shut sufficient to the broad strokes of the outdated film to earn its title, but totally different sufficient that followers of the unique could also be stunned by a few of its twists of plot and character.

The central determine is as soon as once more a preternaturally gifted bouncer named Dalton, who will get employed to wash up a notoriously rowdy bar. Whereas the unique Highway Home from 1989 by no means revealed the origin of Dalton’s superb fight abilities (or why he solely makes use of them to throw drunks out of rock golf equipment) the remake explains each. Its Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) was an elite UFC fighter, till a foul selection within the Octagon set him on the trail to the place director Doug Liman finds him at the beginning of his Highway Home — specifically at all-time low, the place he contemplates changing into extraordinarily acquainted with an oncoming prepare.

When Dalton decides he’s not able to die, he reluctantly accepts a gig from Frankie (Jessica Williams) cleansing up the riff raff at her tavern within the Florida Keys, which is cleverly named “The Highway Home.” Beating up drunks is straightforward for Dalton; navigating native Florida politics in consequence turns into considerably trickier.

It seems a lot of the Highway Home’s most unruly prospects drink there on the behest of Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen), the son of a shady native businessman who’s presently in jail. Ben desires to get out from below his father’s shadow by carving out a quasi-legal empire of his personal within the Keys, however the Highway Home presents a roadblock to his plans. Dalton’s arrival messes with Ben’s schemes, and when the city’s new roughneck refuses to be intimidated, an equally imposing brute named Knox (MMA star Conor McGregor) will get summoned to take him down.

McGregor makes an enormous impression in his characteristic debut. Combining the charisma that made him UFC’s greatest attraction with a palpable sense of unhinged mania, he turns into a much more intimidating determine than anybody within the authentic Highway Home. (That film’s most important villain was performed by 59-year-old Ben Gazzara.) If McGregor ever tires of getting hit within the head for cash he might have a really profitable second profession taking part in film heavies.

It’s arduous to speak about what makes Gyllenhaal’s Dalton so enjoyable to observe with out spoiling a few of Highway Home’s surprises. Whereas the script by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry mirrors the unique in a whole lot of methods — and of its writers, David Lee Henry, is co-credited with the brand new film’s story — it usually subverts viewers’ expectations in very nice methods. Because it regularly shifts away from the unique Highway Home’s story beats, it started to remind me much less and fewer of the 1989 film and increasingly more of the books by crime novelist Elmore Leonard. No person was higher than Leonard at this kind of darkly comedian thriller set in a morally grey universe. (Leonard additionally set a few of his finest books, together with Get Shorty and Rum Punch, in South Florida.)

The brand new film is just not mild on motion; the very first picture of the movie is a POV shot of a fighter throwing a punch. Many extra combat sequences comply with; a few of them viscerally choreographed, and some a bit too cleverly knitted along with a whole lot of flashy digitally-enhanced lengthy takes. However 2024’s Highway Home additionally is aware of tips on how to tempo itself, and to let the viewers soak in that seedy South Florida environment. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton enjoys a number of prickly scenes with a native physician (Daniel Melchior), and he additionally flexes his laconic allure in a subplot involving a curious tween (Hannah Love Lanier) who works in her father’s ramshackle bookstore.

Gyllenhaal’s Dalton turns into an unintentional gumshoe as he tries to piece collectively why his presence so disturbs Ben Brandt. In a meta sense, his makes an attempt to unravel this thriller are additionally an try to unravel Swayze’s Highway Home. That movie makes completely no sense — Did I point out that Swayze’s Dalton was additionally an NYU philosophy main grad who might sew up his personal knife wounds? — and but it adheres so constantly to its personal not possible inner logic that it accrues a form of non secular purity that’s arduous to dislike.

The brand new movie tries to determine a technique to justify a lot of Highway Home’s inexplicable quirks. Relocating the motion from rural Missouri to the Sunshine State actually doesn’t harm; a whole lot of the comically unhinged patrons’ habits can now be chalked up to an enormous case of Florida Man Syndrome. Nonetheless, the brand new Highway Home by no means will get too slowed down with rationalizing or defending itself; it understands the premise’s core attraction (i.e. it’s enjoyable) and succeeds in recapturing it, even when it goes about it in considerably totally different trend.

Highway Home grew to become a cult basic as a result of it was enjoyable to observe on cable. None of it was arduous to know — or no less than none of it made any much less sense — in case you flipped to it midway via. Regardless of the place you began or stopped watching it, you have been assured to see some thrills, some violence, some intercourse attraction, and doubtless a pair laughs, intentional or in any other case.

Whereas the cable TV film ecosystem appears to be going extinct, the brand new Highway Home would have thrived in it as effectively. That is the form of constantly entertaining film you might fortunately watch 100 occasions with out ever actively intending to observe it twice. By its conclusion, it accumulates the environment of an ideal bar; a spot you go much less to get drunk than to soak within the vibes of the music and the regulars. It’s so a lot better than it has any proper to be.

RATING: 7/10