Everyone loves the Patrick Swayze classic Road House; that’s just a fact… unless you’re weird. Anyway, few people actually still talk about its sequel Road House 2: Last Call starring Johnathon Schaech, Richard Norton, Jake Busey and Will Patton. I avoided watching it for the longest time as it was a very belated Straight-to-DVD which are usually terrible.
Road House 2 is actually far better than it had any right to be; sure, it could never reach the lofty heights of the original classic but that’s not to say it’s not without some merit.
Schaech is no Swayze but he doesn’t try to be; in this sequel he is Dalton’s son Shane Tanner who comes home to his small town after his uncle is hospitalized by some thugs who want him to sell his club.
Tanner takes over the club until his uncle gets out of hospital but Wild Bill (Busey) isn’t too happy about it so multiple fight scenes ensue. I gotta say that Schaech has some moves and the fight scenes are all pretty slick but that should come as no surprise as they are coordinated by one JJ Perry.
Jake Busey is probably the least threatening villain you will ever see; he just has too friendly/humorous a face and I can’t take him seriously as a bad guy. His character is still a dick though and you do hate him but the big bad is played by martial arts legend Richard Norton and he and Schaech trade some satisfying blows in the final battle.
Story-wise it’s pretty much exactly the same as the original but really, that’s pretty much what you would want. This isn’t a series that needs to go into space at any point… although if Dalton’s son opened a club on the moon… I smell franchise!
Spoiler alert but Wild Bill has a pretty satisfying death; he is kicked out of a window and is impaled on… something. I couldn’t quite make out what it was but it pleased me greatly.
This was an unapologetically old-school flight flick with a few moments of gratuitous nudity thrown in for good measure.
I thought this kept the spirit of the original alive pretty well; it doesn’t have any classic lines like “I used fuck guys like you in prison” which is a sad loss but it’s nowhere near as bad as I was expecting.
Overall, Road House 2 isn’t as bad as I was expecting and has plenty of beatdowns to please genre fans; it never reaches the heights of the original but it’s more fun than it ought to be.
