‘Road House' is Dumb Fun, but Doug Liman is Still Angry at Amazon

So, I watched Doug Liman’s “Road House” last night, and it is, as of today, streaming on Prime Video. I think it’s fine. It’s what I like to call a big, dumb, fun movie. Nothing more, nothing less.

Liman again shows himself to be an expert in crafting action — most of it defies the laws of physics, but, really, who cares? There’s some brutally entertaining action here. The film is also violent, bloody and chaotically messy. It’s not high art. It’s b-movie grunge, and as long as you realize that from the get-go then it all goes down rather smoothly.

If you just give in to the fact that “Road House” is a hyper masculine fantasy, driven by a charismatically tongue-in-cheek performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, then you could do a lot worse than spending two hours watching this on your couch. Connor McGregor got the message as well — his villainous turn is ridiculously over-the-top, as if he was doing lines of coke and drinking red bull before every take.

Then again, Liman previously stating ”Road House” might be his best movie is a preposterous statement. Some of the films Liman’s made that are miles better than this one: “The Bourne Identity,” “Go,” “Swingers,” “The Edge of Tomorrow,” “The Wall,” and “American Made,”

Just let it go, Doug. Your “Road House” fits perfectly on streaming where I believe it will have a much larger audience. It’s low-IQ filmmaking, and the best way to watch such a film is on a platform. It’s not worth the $20 one would have to pay up for a movie ticket.

However, Liman won’t let it go. In a video just posted by Casey Neiswat, Liman says “Road House” was made for theaters:

We made “Road House” for the big screen. Shot it with IMAX cameras. Big stars in it. It’s a party, there’s great music and great bar fights. I mean, there’s more to it, but at the heart of it, it’s a party.

Amazon never had any intention of putting it in theaters. They wanted to put it on their streaming service and sell toilet paper and toothbrushes. I’m not the only filmmaker that Amazon is doing this to. There’s a string of filmmakers who were promised a theatrical release and then their films were dumped on streaming. They’re definitely giving me the shaft. They’re giving the public the shaft.

There’s been a lot of reporting on the behind-the-scenes drama which involved private investigators, a disgruntled producer, a cameo from Ari Emanuel and Liman going scorched-earth on Amazon. It all culminated with Liman, vehemently unhappy over the release strategy, publishing an op-ed where he promising to boycott the film’s premiere at SXSW in March.

However, later sources clarified that Liman knew all along that “Road House” was going to be a streaming movie. Amazon had given him the option of making the film for $60 million with a theatrical release or taking $85 million and going streaming only. He opted for the latter.

Unexpectedly, Liman did, in fact, attend the SXSW premiere of the film. In the Neiswat interview, he gives his reasons why he decided to make the trek to Austin:

It’s tough to do but sometimes you have to acknowledge that you lost. You took on Amazon. You fought for your movie. I literally tried to get everything in my power to get this movie into theaters, and I lost. If this is going to be the only screening where people can actually buy tickets and go see the movie, I want to be there. The reason I make a movie is to play it in front of an audience. It’s so much freaking work […] I hate fucking losing. I’m not a good loser and I have very publicly lost.