Road House star Jake Gyllenhaal talks taking inspiration from Patrick Swayze as Dalton

Mar. 19, 2024

Exclusive: The Road House cast tell us how they’ve reimagined their characters

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Road House, Doug Liman’s new take on the beloved classic of the same name, shares a great deal of DNA with the original. The underlying template – a lone wanderer blows into town to clean up a rowdy bar, strikes up a relationship with a doctor, and goes up against a vicious enemy – remains the same, but there are some key changes from the original that mark the Prime Video version as different.

Patrick Swayze played ‘cooler’ (AKA bouncer) Dalton in the ‘89 original film, and, this time, Jake Gyllenhaal is stepping in to play the role. Gyllenhaal and Swayze, who were co-stars inDonnie Darko, portray two very different incarnations of Dalton – though, as Gyllenhaal tells us, there is still some overlap.

“There’s an essential part of Dalton that I loved,” Gyllenhaal says. “And it was definitely a characteristic, a personality trait, that Patrick had in spades, which is this sort of quiet patience. What I love about the original Dalton, and also this one, is that, the Dalton that I play, has a bit of more absurd humor to him. His observations are always a bit wry. But there’s a real power in his stillness, and I definitely brought that from Patrick’s interpretation.”

“And definitely working in the [Dominican Republic], surrounded by Dominican girls, I feel that I also, in the moment, took a bit of that warm blood from the Latinas a little bit to Ellie,” she continues. “She’s definitely unapologetic. I took a bit of the location itself to the character.”

Then there’s Billy Magnussen’s Ben Brandt, a delightful villain who fulfils a similar role in the story as Ben Gazzara’s Brad Wesley. Magnussen, though, doesn’t want to weigh the films against each other. “It was its own character. I don’t want to compare the past film with the modern day film, because I don’t think entertainment should be competitive,” he says. “It shouldn’t. You can’t compare it; a piece of art is a piece of art. Let it be what it is.

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“Doug Liman invited me into this film, and I just wanted to create a character that was the bad guy,” he adds. “You want to hate this guy. So that’s what I tried to do.”

Road House is available on Prime Video from 21 March. You can fill out your watchlist with our guide to the year’s most exciting upcomingmovie release dates.

Keep your eyes peeled for more on Road House on GamesRadar+ and the Inside Total Film Podcast soon, and see whatMagnussen had to say about the live-action Lilo & Stitchthrough the link.

I’m a Senior Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site’s Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.

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