Patrick Swayze plays Dalton, a lethal but zen bouncer in the cult-favorite, Road House, which also features the famed blind Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey as the bar band of the Double Deuce.

Dalton is hired by Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to help change his bar, the Double Deuce, into something a little more profitable. It has fights every night, staff are stealing and dealing, and none of them seem focused on making the Deuce anything but a dive and a paycheck.

Dalton comes in, makes some changes, and quickly runs afoul of the local Boss Hog, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) who seems intent on controlling everything in the popular little town, including the local Doc (Kelly Lynch) who quickly develops a thing for Dalton.

Dalton goes from helping the bar claw its way up from notoriety to a respected and noteworthy establishment to confronting Wesley when things start to go sour for the entire town.

It’s incredibly cheesy fun, features a score by Micheal Kamen, which feels like a cross between his Lethal Weapon and Licence to Kill scores, and also features the incredibly cool Sam Elliott as Dalton’s friend and mentor, Wade Garrett.

It’s goofy fun, and totally enjoyable, but the film looks flat. Whether that is production design, lighting, photography or a combination of all those things, the only images that tend to really pop feature Swayze by the river, everything else lacks a vibrancy and feels almost like it was shot for television (except for the nudity, language and violence).

The film almost goes over the top at the end of the film, shoehorning in explosions and squibs to make for a super-violent ending, which again, is fun, but does it necessarily work? And are the police in the area so ineffective that they only show up at the end of the movie?

And we don’t see the physical changes coming into effect on the bar, there are simply cuts and the bar looks better and better, but because of the design and lighting, never seems to be anything more than a set. We don’t see any of the construction, painting or redesign, and the bar never seems to be closed, so when did all this happen?

But let’s not go picking nits, the film is all about letting Swayze shine and letting he and Sam Elliott look cool kicking ass, and being nice until it’s time to not be nice.

It’s been a while since I had seen this one, but I found myself laughing and enjoying this one a lot, Swayze, Elliott and Lynch are great, there are also a number of recognizable faces among the supporting cast including Red West and Kathleen Wilhoite.

It’s silly, it’s goofy, and it’s fun.