107. Dalton’s back

Broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, corded with muscle, Dalton’s back is a perfect thing, an inverted arrowhead of sex. The sun glistens and gleams from every sweat-soaked ridge and cleft. At times you’d swear it’s a source of light itself. The camera orbits Dalton throughout his riverside tai chi routine and his whole body, or at least the upper half which is mostly what you see, is a marvel of course. But his back looks like it was manufactured, by the company who designed the clockwork opening credits for Game of Thrones maybe, or the people who adapted H.R. Giger’s artwork into sculptures for his house. During his waterside tai chi routine both Emmett, his friend, and Wesley, his enemy, stop what they’re doing and just…stare. It’s impossible to blame them. Or us. Dalton’s character is built on the sense that his many aspects—fighter, lover, road warrior, philosopher, rich famous guy, aw shucks everyman, killing machine, pacifist, beer-drinker, binge-reader, master, apprentice—all work in concert to make the man. Road House too, when appreciated properly, is less a film than an ecosystem: hyperefficient factory-made late-’80s star vehicle, barely competent incoherent MST3K fodder, rock-solid action flick, more obvious than usual homoerotica, smarter than it looks, dumber than it realizes, a Ben Gazzara film, a Terry Funk film. When you watch Dalton’s flawless, godlike arms and traps and shoulderblades flex and contract in harmony, you’re watching the character and the movie in metonymy. You’re watching a real physical thing, Patrick Swayze’s beautiful beautiful body, do what Patrick Swayze’s character and Patrick Swayze’s movie are also doing. As below, so above.

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