Even if it offered nothing else, this would be a masterpiece for “I used to fuck guys like you in prison”, which is easily the hardest line ever written for a macho 80s henchman. But luckily there is also so much more, in what has to be one of the most ridiculous and excessive movies in an era of pop action that challenged the definition of those words. One of the key creative minds here is producer Joel Silver, who saw a lot of commercial potential in a broad, vulgar, caricatured neo-western for 13-year-old boys about a magical macho dream world where titty bar bouncers have the same nationwide mythic fame of cowboy gunslingers and know karate. He's responsible for calling up Rowdy Herrington, a guy with a name destined to make one of the all-time great American fighting movies, and who at the time had spent a decade as a gaffer for some major 80s movies including Repo Man and A Nightmare on Elm Street and who had just done his own stylish neon 80s serial killer film Jack's Back, and convincing him that this script he wasn't all that interested in had potential if an all-star crew could be assembled to punch it up. And the rest is history. Patrick Swayze who was hot off the sensitive and physical heartthrob status he had achieved in Dirty Dancing was interested in the role of Dalton as it was both intensely, physically tough and cool but had an interesting contradictory vulnerability/emotional dimension to it where he is intellectually, philosophically and morally at odds with and is existentially tortured by the thing he’s good at, which is unleashing gloriously crafted "pain don't hurt" violence on screen for our entertainment because he has to. And to formally express this contradiction Herrington was given full access to the Joel Silver Action Squad/Dream Team: editors John F. Link and Frank J. Urioste (who between the two them and Mark Goldblatt defined what 80s action-thriller editing even was, take a look at those credits), composer Michael Kamen (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard) and most importantly stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni who is probably partially responsible for half of your favorite 80s/90s stunts, especially if you like Tony Scott movies.But on top of those heavy-hitters, also invited by Picerni to help train the actors and choreograph the fights was Benny “The Jet” Urquidez (a professional kickboxer who had worked with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung) who brought controlled, technique-heavy Hong Kong style fight craft to American western bar brawls, and to shoot those Herrington turned to the legendary cinematographer Dean Cundey (hot off a decade of John Carpenter and Robert Zemeckis collaborations, and who he had worked under previously) to bring the clean widescreen elegance he was famous for and make sure every absurd piece of in-camera bodily and environmental stunt destruction is framed and blocked for clarity and impact. The end result of all this is an amazing primary color cartoon mixture of old romantic western folk hero formula storytelling (the dusty saloon hangout qualities of which have been updated for modern Midwest blue-collar dive bars), 80s anti-Reagan class politics and mulleted neon music video male-melodrama earnestness (the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail comes to mind, not just because Kelly Lynch is the love interest), as well as the pulpier more comically exaggerated end of both the athletic Hong Kong martial arts movies and the regional American outlaw crime movie that had made Burt Reynolds a star. Though less the bleakly violent 70s exploitation (your White Lightning's or Walking Tall's) than the goofball stuntman antics of Hal Needham.Delivering on all the confident, tongue-in-cheek craft necessary to sell the earnestly romantic logline idea of Swayze's NYC philosophy PhD, zen tai-chi blackbelt bar fixer/"cooler"/bouncer-as-gunslinger James Dalton, who is both the most skilled, brutal fighter in the land with "balls big enough to come in a dump truck" but also a polite, sexy pacifist who hates those who abuse violence for sadism and greed and only reluctantly unleashes the throat-ripping beast ("I want you to be nice... until it's time to not be nice") as a sheriff figure to restore order. In this case, to a filthy shitkicker Jasper, Missouri bar known as The Double Deuce which holds the all-time record of bloody brawls, flying/smashing beer bottles, and "blind white boy" Jeff Healey barroom blues rock covers. (Love the detail of the protective cage he needs to do his lap steel guitar soloing behind.) His "be nice" mantra/operational tactics, shirtless reading of Jim Harrison, graceful sunrise tai chi exercises, and exposed ass cheeks (that men and women both leer at) eventually catching the attention of a wealthy, J.C. Penney-ass crime boss/western land baron Brad Wesley (a delightfully smirky Ben Gazzara who Herrington loved in all the Cassavetes/Bogdanovich films he did in the 70s/80s) who lives in a Miami Vice villain mansion across the pond from the gorgeous cabin loft Dalton is renting out of a Midwest farmers horse stable, sings doo-wop while swerving over highway lines in an ascot (because he owns this damn town!), smokes cigars in a pink bathrobe at his sexy pool parties, and believes his "purpose on this Earth" is to violently squeeze Jasper for every drop of capital he can. And he also liked the Double Deuce when it was rowdy, dirty and disreputable, so like every great movie villain in history he sends his martial artist goon squad to disrupt and sabotage Dalton's efforts and start a classic western turf war.Culminating in a series of trash-talking, bowie knife-wielding, table-smashing, razorblade cowboy boots ("you're too stupid to have a good time"), and roundhouse/axe-kicking saloon brawl sequences that are some of the finest of the 80s, one of the more humorously awkward sex scenes of a decade filled with them (with lots of Otis Redding wall-mounting foreplay and Gazzara voyeuristically watching in a rocking chair), and the introduction of one of the greatest homoerotic bromances of all time between Swayze's Dalton and his sexy aged mentor-dad Pat, I mean Wade Garret (a gruff-voiced, salt-and-pepper maned Sam Elliott) who punches dudes in the cock and into dumpsters with the same skill that he drunkenly, sensually dances to George Strait. As a more impartial, pragmatic gunslinger you'd find in the Spaghetti era of the genre, he can't understand why Dalton is so hellbent on applying his guilt-ridden pacifist philosophy where it clearly isn't working and defying this country club psycho warlord who by this point is blowing up auto parts stores with massive TNT explosions surely pulled from Joel Silver's personal supply, driving literal monster trucks over car dealership showrooms, and unleashing his earring'd mirror-world anti-Swayze Jimmy (martial artist Marshall R. Teague, in very similar tight shirt + jeans + cowboy boot fits) who flips around and uses a pool cues like a fighting pole in a Shaw Brothers kung fu movie. But after Wade tearfully catches Dalton's fist in a moment of pure masculine melodrama (and later is stabbed to death for the crime of helping him), Dalton can no longer resist the sad boy call-to-(throat-tearing)-arms (even though as he mournfully puts it: "nobody wins a fight”), and triggers one of the greatest double-climaxes of the 1980s: the first a sweaty, brutal, technically impressive side-scrolling martial arts fight that starts with another massive explosion and a wild leaping dirtbike tackle and ends with impassioned declarations of sexual dominance and gruesomely animalistic bare hands finishing moves that would make Sonny Chiba and Mortal Kombat fans proud; followed by a slasher-killer action hero mansion siege that would become Steven Seagal's bread and butter, with giant Benz flipping fireballs, throwing knives, attempted murder by stuffed polar bear, and Gazzara declaring Swayze's beautiful ass cheeks will be added to his trophy room right before being nailed by 4-5 of the biggest shotgun squibs of the decade. Genuinely one of the most insane movies I've ever seen, and a uniquely exaggerated blend of genre playfulness and skilled action craft that make it truly feel like the last movie of the 1980s right before the bubble of its crass, maximalist male fantasy trends burst. Some might try to tell you that that makes its pleasures "bad" or "camp", but everyone involved in the making of it knew what they were doing, and decided to gleefully lean further into it whether the bombastic images and tone made sense or not and to me that's beautiful. Whether its laid-back macho hangout western meets 80s dive bar melodrama meets sick over-the-top action/martial arts pure cinema movie magic spell catches you or not, its hilariously and deliriously juvenile writing and emotionally contradictory love of gorgeously excessive on-screen violence is destined to make it a drunken boys night classic until the end of time and it's entirely earned it. "Christ, you get paid for beating people up. Tell me you don't love it. Of course you do. You wouldn't be human if you didn't.”Full discussion on ep 321 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.
