“I’ve always wanted to try you. I think I can take you.” That’s what the Knife Nerd said to Dalton in the very first scene of the film, when Dalton breaks up a fight at the club he worked at back in New York. The sexualization of combat was already clear in the man’s choice of words, a language of dominance and submission that glistens and gleams each time it’s used. It happens again and again. “Your ass is mine, boy,” Jimmy tells Dalton when Wesley calls off their fight in the Double Deuce, just for example. And a few seconds from where we now stand it will accelerate to explicitly sexual speeds.
Dalton inadvertently sets the dominoes in motion. “I know exactly who Brad Wesley is,” he snaps at Dr. Elizabeth Clay after she warns him he has no idea what Brad Wesley is capable of. “I’ve seen his kind many times. He keeps taking, and taking, until somebody takes him.” Dalton believes he’s man to do this—to take Brad Wesley, and thus best him. There’s a weird lacuna in the phrasing that invites questions: takes him…where, exactly? takes him down? takes him on? takes him in? You almost can’t help but sub in the sexual connotation of the phrase, since we’re offered so little by way of an alternative. This shirtless mass of muscle and sinew and fine feathered hair wants to take his enemy. You connect the dots.
Tags: dalton, road house