Monday, May 03, 2010

Road House

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Road House is a great movie where Patrick Swayze plays the lead role Dalton as a tough guy. He is known as one of the toughest bouncers around and is recruited to help clean up a bar with a rough crowd. The main story is a clash between Swayze, the head bouncer and a powerful business man that runs the town through corruption. Swayze enters to clean up the bar he begins to feud with the powerful owner for messing up the natural order of such a small town. Swayze’s character is not your average oversized bouncer, his small stature combined with his way of looking at the situation is refreshing. “Nobody ever wins in a fight” captures him as a person, he only reacts to situations throughout the movie not fighting until his safety is in jeopardy. He is what it takes for the small town to rally together to fight back against the oppressive businessman. The situation gets out of control but the people of the town prevail in the fight.


Initially Swayze is brought to the small town because of the money offered by the owner, but early on we get the hint he is a down to earth old-school guy when he refuses to take a plane to the new location because he is scared to fly. Swayze is soft spoken and enjoys his time alone until he finds love with a local doctor. The love between Swayze and the doctor combined with the relationships he makes around town are what drive him to face the corruption and stick it out.


Dalton has a similar view on violence to someone who we saw earlier in the class. Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid says that violence is for self defense only. He seems like he’s so good at fighting that he enjoys it, but he strongly opposes violence unless it’s for self defense. Dalton’s quote that was mentioned at the beginning of this post suggests a similar moral stance on violence to Miyagi. “Nobody ever wins in a fight,” says Dalton. Swayze has the big strong and tough reputation, and many people envy that and try to act like that and look to fight. But Dalton, like Miyagi, resorts to violence only when it is absolutely necessary.

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