Road House 2: Last Call (2006)

Tagline:

Take it outside.

Back of DVD:

From drunken fist-fights to all-out brawls, the Black Pelican is known for its rough and rowdy atmosphere. But for one local drug-trafficer, it's prime real estate. Determined to make the road house his personal office by any means necessary, Wild Bill (Busey) starts a war with the Pelican's owner Nate (Patton). But when things turn sour, Nate enlists help from his nephew, undercover DEA agent Shane Tanner (Schaech). Seeing the opportunity to make the biggest bust of his career - and exact a lethal dose of revenge along the way - Shane takes over the Pelican for his battered uncle... but he's about to discover this local drug ring is bigger than ever imagined.

Movie Review:

In the comments of a Michael Dudikoff movie Black Thunder over at the DTV Connoisseur, Matt and venom discussed briefly Road House 2. Venom was a fan of it but Matt thinks it's a "sack-of-asscrack DTV cashgrab". Now somehow I've managed to never seen the original Patrick Swayze movie, like many "classics" of 80's action that I am catching up on. The other week I was trawling for a non-bootleg bargain in Chinatown when I tripped over this DTV sequel for only a few bucks. Thinking back to Matt's hilarious comment and vow to never review the movie, I knew I had to take a gamble and give it a go.

After the old owner of the Black Pelican bar, Nate Tanner (Will Patton), turfs out some wannabe drug dealers who insist he sells his bar to the local drug lord (Wild Bill), he receives a strange phone call saying his staff aren't loyal and for the full details he should go meet this mysterious stranger. It of course turns out to be Wild Bill who sends his grunts in to fight and get their arse handed to them, impressively, by Patton. Wild Bill gets the upper hand and his Go-Go style sidekick girl throws knives at him, then throws him into the lake.

Elsewhere at a strip bar a drug deal is going down between Shane Tanner (Johnathon Schaech) and a token spanish guy. Just as the deal goes through, a busty barmaid busts out her weapon (by that I mean sidearm) and puts the two under arrest for trafficking. She cuffs Shane, takes him into the back room and straddles him. All the boys in the audience cheer (I assume). Shane is freed and we realise he is an undercover DEA agent. He get's chewed out by his boss (of course) and then receives a phone call about his uncle Nate Tanner in hospital. Deciding to find out what happened Shane travels to Louisiana to get revenge and run the Black Pelican bar. The first thing he does is throw out the trash at the bar and take over running the joint.

I'd never heard of Johnathon Schaech before this. He is in slasher Laid to Rest that I've been meaning to check out for ages now, and also in it's upcoming sequel. He did an all right job as Shane Tanner and kicked a fair bit of arse when it was called for, and helps pretty blonde girls change their car tyres as well (Ellen Hollman playing Beau). Beau is quite hot and quickly gets into Shane's pants. When she hears that Wild Bill is planning on killing him at the bar at night she keeps him away from the Black Pelican with sex. It only keeps him away so long though and in the end they both go. This is a good thing as Beau (a school teacher who is, you guessed it, ex military) gets into a full cat-fight with Wild Bill's crazy sidekick girl! That's what the punters want to see! There's also a pretty funny fight in the hospital between the still-injured Nate Tanner and Wild Bill's thugs.

The action dissipates a bit by the middle before the end movie climax, and normally this would really annoy me. Surprisingly I felt the story was strong enough to keep me interested when the action quotient was low. Also the overacting of Jake Busey kept the whole thing cracking along as well. It all ends in a big old fashion shoot-em-up and more bar room brawls as Shane cleans up this town.

The bar room fights were all quite good, though with the excessive back-of-the-head viewpoints shown I have to assume there was a lot of stunt double action going on. There was a bit of zooming in sometimes but mostly you could see the fights pretty clearly. I was also happy not to see any MTV-style ADD editing. Actually the whole movie, whilst looking like a standard Sony DTV movie (think Connor's War or any Seagal/Snipes of late) still felt quite old school, which was refreshing.

Jake Busey really is hilarious as Wild Bill, and yes, he is Gary Busey's son (that reminds me, I really need to do some Gary Busey movies here) and just like Machete he gets the ladies - a great lesbian spa scene is included for those who are interested (all of you). His deal in this is that for some reason the location of the bar would be perfect for hosting drug deals. That's all really, and he just wants the bar. I had wondered where I had seen this guy before and it dawned on me; he was the crazy religious nutter in Contact that blows himself up. He was frightening in that movie but is just ridiculous in Roadhouse 2. He reminded me a bit of the white kid in your street who wants to be a "gangsta" like his idols and spends his whole time overacting and holding a pretend gun sideways. He's never really frightening as a drug lord. In fact it feels like he has daddy issues. I could be reading into something that isn't there, but either way, Wild Bill is no Kill Bill.

Here's the bait-and-switch however. Richard Norton doesn't turn up till the half way point and then only has a few lines on an expensive boat. He does eventually land in Louisiana when Shane has made life tough for Norton's cronies - and yes there is a reasonable fight between him and Schaech - but still he doesn't do much else. His accent is all over the place too. If I hadn't known beforehand and you had told me afterwards that he was Australian, I wouldn't believe you. It's like an ungodly mix of American-South African-New Zealand.

So there you have it; it's not brilliant but in the end I was entertained. There were fights that weren't half bad, a few boobs and even an explosion (just a car smashing into two others). I'm sure that if I had see the first movie and was comparing the two, it would not come off so well, but that just isn't the case. Sorry Matt, it's two to one in favour for this now.

The Video:

Sharp, clear and vibrant like most modern DTV affairs. Clear, punchy surround audio. Runtime 83 minutes.

Sourced From:

Some random shop in Chinatown for $5.

Trailer:

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