Later in the morning after he murders a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands, Dalton parks his car a second time. This, too, is the way of things. Our days are made of repetition; and even in Jasper, some deeds, once done, are done again. Dalton has been doing things on this bright sunny day, with the famous hills of Missouri visible in the distance, and having done some of them about three minutes of screentime earlier does not change that. So Dalton goes about his business, and to do his business he must needs park his car at his place of business, again. It’s as simple as that.
Less simple, more baffling, is the message communicated by this choice of shot. It’s true that Dalton has to park his car in the Double Deuce parking lot twice on this fateful morning, for reasons that will soon be made clear. It’s substantially—remarkably, even—less true that director Rowdy Herrington needs to show Dalton parking his car in the Double Deuce parking lot twice on this fateful morning. It’s not even clear he needs to show it once, the importance of his choice of car that morning notwithstanding. We know where and what the Double Deuce is, and we know Dalton goes there. Do we need to see him drive across that big dirt parking lot, park his car, get out, walk up to the front doors, walk through the front doors, and walk over to the bar two times in under five minutes?
No, we don’t. But there’s a lot about Road House we don’t need. Perhaps need is not the right rubric for anything about this movie. Perhaps that’s what the two parking scenes, standing like the Argonath, are meant to convey.
