When Carrie Ann shows up at Emmett’s farm to visit Dalton the night after he fires Morgan and Pat McGurn and puts a Knife Nerd’s face through a table <exhale> this is the sight that first greets her. Not Dalton nude, and not Dalton half-dressed and stretching and smoking and somehow hung over from reading too hard the night before—just a man, beautifully centered, in a bed, beautifully centered, in a room with hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, glowing with natural morning light reflected off the waterfront view outside. It’s just ridiculous, for a movie this dumb, to have a shot this pretty with light this lovely. It’s like Barry Lyndon up in here, for real.
But it’s also the one moment during which I can kind of sort of imagine being Dalton. Not fighting people for a living, no. Certainly not fighting people and winning for a living. Not parading around nude in front of my coworker. Not smoking and stretching, simultaneously, first thing after I roll out of bed. Not doing either thing separately either. Not grabbing another Jim Harrison novel while murmuring “Hair of the dog that bit me” or whatever the appropriate response is to getting a hangover from reading Legends of the Fall might be. Not pissing off foundational figures in the hardcore wrestling, Los Angeles punk, and John Cassavetes acting scenes in one fell swoop. Not giving goofy little salutes to people as we say our goodbyes. Not commanding a $350K salary. Not having sex with a doctor of nebulous speciality played by Kelly Lynch, though I suppose not not doing that either. Not accepting any offer made to me by any character played by Kevin Tighe. Not festooning the mansion of a mall developer with corpses, unless perhaps they really deserved it. None of that. But sleeping in a beautiful gray-bright wooden room on the water, naked under the covers, groaning a bit as I get up but then looking around and seeing that the place I live in feels warm and inviting and special and a place like I might be happy to live in? Yeah, I can imagine that.
Tags: dalton, interior design, road house