One movie you did not mention was Point Break. I have yet to actually see the movie, but I did see Point Break Live in Hollywood a couple weeks ago and it was simply fabulous. I should probably wander down to Blockbuster and check it out before that Blockbuster goes out of business (I canceled Netflix). I’m looking to see Mr. Swayze’s portrayal of Bodhi, and Keanu’s Johnny Utah of course!

The bar becomes much more profitable, of course. But by the end of the film, you get the feeling none of the locals go there anymore – it’s all these yuppies in skinny ties, probably ordering overpriced chicken fingers to go with their microbrews. Swayze is basically paid to gentrify the place, and nobody really likes gentrification. I honestly wonder if the movie wasn’t designed to be quietly subversive.

Look at it this way: a “roadhouse,” in my mind, is a rough and tumble place. It’s supposed to have some edge to it. Swayze isn’t hired to fix the roadhouse, so much as get rid of it entirely. (His one-man war against organized crime is more of a side project.)

Road House is a lot like Bloodsport — there’s the movie that they made to make money, and then there’s the part of it that most people find vaguely creepy and offensive that turns out to be really deep and bizarre and interesting and offers a lot of compelling aesthetic touches, verbal and visual ironies, structural nuances and insights into the human condition.

Matt, I know you’ve mentioned it a bunch of times — the most interesting overarching thing about Road House is how the bar goes from being what most people would think of as a really cool bar — with the people throwing bottles at the cage where people play country music — to an extremely lame one — a neon-clad yuppie sham palace — because of Patrick Swayze’s efforts. How through everything he does, there’s something that gets worse, gets ruined — but exactly what is hard to explain or pin down better than the movie does itself.

Road House is choice. And people should watch it.

It’s too bad he couldn’t find higher-profile work over the last 10 years, but you have to respect the way he did The Beast while suffering from terminal cancer. He played a lot of tough guys in his career, but maybe he wasn’t acting at all. I remember a scene in Roadhouse where he’s getting stitched up. The doctor offers him Novocaine. He smiles a gentle smile and tells her, “Pain don’t hurt.” Which is a line that’s both ludicrous and awesome, and finally, today, oddly touching.