Dr. Elizabeth Clay runs away after she sees what Dalton has wrought. As well she might: Her concern even prior to his duel to the death with Jimmy was that Dalton is as much a danger to Jasper as the people he’s ostensibly protecting Jasper from. Now Dalton has exposed himself for what he is, or at least what he can be, and she wants no part of it.

This enrages Dalton, though not against the Doc. No, Dalton lays the blame squarely where it belongs: at the feet of Brad Wesley, who ordered his man Jimmy to visit Emmett’s ranch and destroy it that fateful night. It’s his fault Dalton had to rip a man’s throat out, again. It’s his fault the Doc has run away in horror. And he needs to be made aware of it.

“Wesley!” Dalton screams. “Wesley!” Dalton screams again. “Wesley!” Dalton screams a third time. A callout in triplicate.

And then the final blow:

“FUCK YOU!!!”

It’s a hilariously anticlimactic thing to say at this point. It’s of a piece with his earlier mid-fight banter, which consisted solely of non sequitur expletives. It’s funny to think of the Doc, running away, hearing her boyfriend flip the verbal bird to her ex-husband in the middle of their murder contest.

But it gets the job done. Wesley comes back to his balcony in time to see Dalton toss the corpse of his number one guy into the river, allowing it to float downstream, offscreen, and out of the film forever. There’s no twinkle of amusement in his eyes, no sardonic smile across his lips. There’s something cold there instead, something making calculations as to who will need to get hurt to make this right. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s something very much like grief. When Jimmy floats away, there’s no doubt he takes many of Brad Wesley’s fondest wishes with him.

She sees it all. Dr. Elizabeth Clay catches up to Dalton in time to see him deliver the coup de grace to an unarmed, helpless man. She watches the man she loves raise his hand, slam it down onto another man’s throat, and tear that throat clean out. She sees him kick the man’s corpse into the water. She runs into the water, drags the body back on shore, examines his wound. She is desperate not to have seen what she has seen—to believe that somehow this man (with whom she must have some acquaintance given her one-time closeness to his master, Brad Wesley) survived what her man did to him. But it is not to be.

And standing there, watching her, seeing her see him, is that man, Dalton. When the camera first shows him after tracing Doc’s triage for some time, he is hunched over, staring at the red wet mess of his right hand. He looks wretched, like a wretch, shocked and shame-faced and horrified to have been seen like this.His posture is that of a Gollum, but written all over his face is the “Don’t look at me” plea of Frank Cotton from Hellraiser or Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. He has the mien of a masturbator who’s been caught at the end of the act by his devoutly Catholic mother and is preparing himself for punishment. There’s something very palpably rooted in sexual shame and compulsion in the way Swayze plays this moment. This is not a side of himself he has ever wanted any women to see, but when the time came, he simply could not help himself.

²⁴ But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

²⁵ The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

²⁶ And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

²⁷ Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

²⁸ And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

²⁹ Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

John 20:24-29 (KJV)

Right after Dalton tears Jimmy’s throat out, killing him, he spin-kicks the man’s still-standing corpse into the water. It feels like an instinctive maneuver in a way: Dalton is used to barfights in which it behooves one to keep fighting until one is the last man standing, ergo if Jimmy is still standing, one more kick is warranted.

But perhaps another instinct is at work: the instinct to distance himself from the carnage he has wrought, the instinct to hide Jimmy’s grisly visage from his sight, the instinct to seek a means to wash away his sins. Dalton has killed tonight, breaking a taboo learned the hard way during the devastating events of his Memphis sojourn. Best to get the body out of here, get it away, dump it where its deadness can do Dalton no further harm.

Jimmy blows up Emmett’s house. Dalton knocks Jimmy off his motorcycle. Jimmy and Dalton fight. Dalton gets the upper hand. Jimmy pulls out a gun. Dalton kicks the gun out of Jimmy’s hand as he fires. Dalton tears Jimmy’s throat out. Dalton kicks Jimmy’s still-standing corpse into the water.

That, in broad strokes, is the beach fight scene. But this simple recitation of facts does not do justice to the magnificence of the throat rip, one of the great cinematic acts of violence of the past thirty years.

Until this point, fights in Road House always go a certain way. Some goons show up and pick a fight, and they exchange blows with Dalton and his men until they have been hit in the head, gut, or legs so many times they can no longer fight. It’s time consuming, and messy, and involves a lot of back and forth.

Dalton and Jimmy’s fight was already an escalation of this pattern insofar as the combatants are so much more talented at violence than the bulk of Dalton’s opponents. In Jimmy he met his match, or something very near to it. These kicks and punches had something serious behind them, even if Dalton seemed barely able to suppress a laugh at one point. These are precisely targeted strikes. It’s not a matter of Tinker nearly getting lucky with a knife—everything Jimmy does is meant to maim and kill.

But the throat rip is something singular, something special. It is the purest encapsulation of The Time to Not Be Nice. Faced with an opponent willing to violate the sacred spirit of hand-to-hand combat in order to settle matters with a gun, Dalton unleashes his own lethal weapon: his bare hand. A chop, a grip, a pull, and no more Jimmy. It’s as simple as pulling a trigger.

But in keeping with Dalton’s mien as a man who bridges the natural and unnatural worlds, it’s messier than a gun. It’s like digging your hands in the cool earth and uprooting a weed. Dalton grasps the violence in Jimmy and pulls it out of his neck, and behold, there’s no Jimmy left inside there anymore, no Jimmy at all.

It is the position of this publication that until Jimmy pulls a gun on Dalton, Dalton has no intention to kill Jimmy at all. Why would he? Men have come at him hard again and again, brandishing knives the size of an infant, and he’s let them slide with a mere ass-whupping. It’s true that Jimmy just blew up Emmett’s house, but the old man’s alright. So is Pete Strodenmire. So is Red Webster. Is Dalton going to make the first kill in this feud simply because Jimmy expresses his preference for raping Dalton-like men in prison? I doubt it.

But when that gun comes out and Jimmy says “I’m gonna kill you the old-fashioned way,” all bets are off. You can’t block a bullet with tai chi. You can’t be nice and escort a bullet off the premises. You can’t growl a dopey comeback like “Kiss my ass” in response to a direct threat of murder, because in that time the murder may well already take place.

This is not to say that Dalton was given no choice but to murder Jimmy once the gun came out. He disarms the man and could deliver any number of non-lethal coups de grace were he so inclined. But as I’ve been saying for weeks now, the time to not be nice is upon us. If Jimmy’s gonna open the death door, Dalton’s for damn sure gonna stroll right through and dump Jimmy’s body in the foyer. As Cody put it, long ago, “You fuck with him, he’ll seal your fate.” This is Jimmy fucking with Dalton. The rest is just math.

It’s really all over for Jimmy once Dalton snaps his leg against that tree trunk. Punches, kicks, everything Dalton can dish out Jimmy takes right in the mush. He’s practically dead on his feet by the time he stumbles to the ground a few feet away from Dalton. That’s when Dalton enters wait-and-see mode: Does this guy have anything left in the tank, or does he still have a trick up his sleeve (or his pant leg)?

It is at this time that Dalton’s body starts moving up and down to the pace of his breathing. Right arm raised to strike, lower arm thrust forward for balance, he almost cycles or rotates into his breathing. Inhale and his torso moves up and back. Exhale and his torso thrusts forward and down. It happens two or three times that we can see. And it reminds me of nothing so much as the way characters in an RPG video game will cycle through a similar set of waiting-to-strike movements as they await their turn. It’s some Final Fantasy shit, really. To which I can only say add Dalton to Kingdom Hearts and Super Smash Bros.

Jimmy uses his leg to break a tree; Dalton uses that tree to break his leg. How often can you describe the turning point of a fight in terms so symmetrical they could pass for aphorism? That’s the beauty of this extraordinary fight. It uses its environment, and spacial relationships between the combatants within that environment. To see and hear him, Jimmy looks and sounds like he’s closing in for the hill when he delivers the kick that misses Dalton and separates a branch from the tree between them instead. He seems momentarily surprised, and that moment is just long enough for Dalton to grab Jimmy by the ankle and use the tree trunk as a fulcrum to pulp Jimmy’s lower leg. One could make a point about Dalton being in touch with nature here were one so inclined.

After that the fight is all downhill from Jimmy, until he finally abandons the whole Marquess of Queensbury thing and pulls out a gun. At that point, too, the result will be the opposite of what he’d intended. Some people you can’t stop from signing their own death warrant.

Take a moment, won’t you, to appreciate the faces pulled by Marshall Teague as Jimmy dances his last lethal dance. He’s marvelously expressive, isn’t he? His face contorts like a noh demon mask when he’s preparing to strike, and his eyes twinkle with malice and delight when in repose.

And this elasticity, this reactivity, tells us something about the face’s bearer. This is a man who loves what he does, and that love is written all over his face. The professional is personal with Jimmy as a rule, whereas for Dalton this kind of fury and passion is the exception. Perhaps you need to form murderous intent in advance to channel this kind of rubber-faced self-expression. Perhaps malice aforethought has a transformative effect on the jaw and the flesh. Viewed through this lens, what Dalton does to Jimmy can almost be seen as simply pulling the plug and turning this beautiful and terrible face off.

At any rate we were robbed of a Marshall Teague/Bruce Campbell fight when both men were in their prime, and someone should go to jail for it.

JIMMY: Damn, boy—I thought you were good!

DALTON: Go fuck yourself.

Ah, the rapier wit of Mr. James Dalton. Once again, he responds to a fairly specific taunt from his enemy with whatever generic oath he finds lying around in his battered mind, nearly to the point of non sequitur. He doesn’t defend his martial prowess, he doesn’t malign Jimmy’s in turn—he simply picks a more colorful version of “Go jump in a lake.” (Which indeed Jimmy will soon do, sort of, and fatally at that. Be that as it may.)

But the thing is, why would Dalton keep a complement of insults ready to hand? Recall the Giving of the Rules: Insults are just two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response. What’s he gonna do, call Jimmy a cocksucker? Call his mama a whore? A seasoned fighter would know better than to respond to such meaningless verbiage, so there’s no reason to accumulate it. You are such an asshole, go fuck yourself—these are the comebacks of a man whose mind is taken up with more important matters, both physical and philosophical. Because Jimmy is wrong—Dalton is good, as Jimmy is about to learn to his great misfortune.

Midway through their fight on the beach, Jimmy wallops Dalton in the side with a hunk of…I want to say driftwood? It could be a fallen branch from one of the nearby trees, too. Either way I commend his astute use of innate environmental advantages in his fight. That’s the root of all good fight scenes, as I’ve said for many years now—they distinguish themselves from one another by making use of the physical space around them and the objects that inhabit that space. It’s a bit disappointing that at no point does anyone throw sand in the other person’s eyes to momentarily blind them, but be that as it may. It’s also unclear how Jimmy can muster enough force to break an item hard enough to injure Dalton’s ribs a less than one-foot swing, but we’ll ignore that as well. Jimmy’s presence of mind is what’s on display here. And when Jimmy gets his leg tangled up in a tree, Dalton will pay him back in kind, reversing the fortunes of the fight and leading to his overall victory. Watch the wood.

Relatively early on in the proceedings, Dalton flashes a grin at Jimmy while they square up after a flurry of blows and counters. Is he…enjoying this? Yes, at the moment anyway, and for several reasons. First, he’s just told Doc that he’s only good at one thing: He never loses. Of course he’s glad to be doing the one thing he’s good at.

Second, consider Jimmy’s rhetoric. He opens their battle banter with “Prepare to die.” Dalton knows he’s in a life-or-death struggle, for himself anyway—I don’t believe he has any plans to kill Jimmy at this stage—and with that in mind Dalton is pleased to have weathered Jimmy’s initial murderous assault with roughly the same alacrity as he’s fended off countless others. He’s doing well, and he knows it.

Third, and again springboarding off Jimmy’s declared intent to kill, Dalton knows that being as good as he is is pissing Jimmy off. He can read the frustration all over Jimmy’s face, and thanks to Marshall Teague’s enormously expressive mug, so can we. There’s some delight to be taken there, as any number of the smug smiles he’s shot at the Tinkers of the world indicate.

But we have another face to look at here, don’t we. Jimmy is not just annoyed, or even pissed—he’s furious. He decided to kill Dalton the moment Dalton knocked him off his motorbike, and he’s doubling down on that decision.

When Dalton realizes this, when Dalton decides it’s really kill or be killed, Dalton will smile no longer.

We’re several exchanges of kicks, strikes, and wrestling holds deep into Dalton and Jimmy’s vicious fight at a small beach on the shore of the mysterious body of water separating Emmett’s ranch from Wesley’s mansion when Dalton takes to the skies once again. He winds up delivering a knee to Jimmy’s midsection, which takes his opponent down. This gives Dalton his first chance to really lay a beating on the guy, albeit briefly as they’re very evenly matched.

But in a film with approximately half a hundred fight scenes, what we’re watching Dalton do stands out. Balletic leaps through the air were not part of his arsenal at any point inside or outside the Double Deuce, which is where all of his fights had been contained until now. So in part we’re seeing him respond to the environment, which has no walls or ceiling or furniture for him to navigate—just the branches of the trees. Small wonder Dalton’s offense becomes a more soaring thing, a thing of beauty.

But one other point worth considering is his motive for the fight. Dalton is off the clock right now, after all. And he’s not defending liquor shipments, or simply performing his routine job of keeping riffraff out of the bar where he works. He’s just seen his friend Emmett nearly get blown to bits by a cackling ghoul in head-to-toe denim. He wants revenge.

Seen in that light, this dance-like formation is how Dalton expresses his rage, his bloodlust, his thirst for retribution. Could there be anything more Dalton than giving voice to his basest instincts in the most beautiful way possible? Dig deeper and deeper into Dalton’s psychophysicality and you’ll find the place where the heavens meet the earth.

JIMMY: Prepare to die!

DALTON: You are such an asshole.

Noël Coward it isn’t. Peter Parker it isn’t. Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man it isn’t. Jimmy makes an explicit threat, and Dalton dodges the threat component completely—no “not today,” no “prepare to think again,” nothing directly tied to Jimmy’s words. Just, “You are such an asshole,” a statement he could have accurately made about Jimmy at any point during their relationship, not predicated on being informed he should prepare to die at Jimmy’s hands.

Not for the last time in the two-minute fight that follows, Dalton’s mid-battle quip is essentially a non sequitur. He hasn’t come to banter—bantering just gets on his nerves. He won’t reply to the banter, but he’ll assert his feelings about the banterer, merely using the banter as a logical starting point. It’s a fascinating series of choices for someone engaged in a life-or-death struggle, like if Luke Skywalker had responded to the Emperor’s taunts by saying “You are one ugly motherfucker.”

“Prepare to die!” “You are such an asshole.” Say it loud and there’s music playing, say it soft and it’s almost like praying.

Decking a man off the back of a moving motorbike is no mean feat. You have to run full-tilt, first of all, as close to motorbike speed as the human body allows, just to get in the door as it were. You need to properly angle your body and the leap it makes so that you’re aimed in the right direction rather than just jumping blindly. You have to lead the bike so that you’re not jumping at air where the bike once was. You have to not lead the bike too much so that you’re not gonna land on the dirt a few feet in front as the bike runs you over. You have to count on your quarry being so preoccupied by his own glee over the wanton destruction he’s wrought that he doesn’t notice the man in sweatpants barreling towards him. It helps to be shirtless and glistening with sweat, too. (I mean, I assume. Aerodynamics and all that.) You need your arms and legs at full extension, buying you time in midflight to readjust and aim appropriately, to say nothing of the asethetics. And you have to be animated with a blinding thirst for vengeance against a man who dressed up in head-to-toe denim in order to blow up the house of the weird old man who rents you an extravagant loft apartment for a hundred bucks a month, a nominal fee intended to keep the local Presbyterians at bay. You put it all together and you have Dalton, running at breakneck speed, then soaring through the air in order to crash into a man on a moving motor vehicle and then, after the crash, to kick his ass and tear his throat out. Poetry in motion. No, wait: Philosophy in motion.

Jimmy Reno has exactly four minutes to live when he sets off the initial explosion in Emmett’s home. Four minutes to the second. What an emotional journey that must be for him. The tension and thrill of being a sneak in the night. The firebug awe of the detonation. The bonus, unlooked for, of the secondary explosion, even bigger than the first. Stopping his getaway motorbike to laugh uproariously at Dalton, Doc, and Emmett, reveling in their powerlessness compared to his fiery prowess. The sudden shock of being knocked off his bike by a flying man. The determination to kill this man. The back and forth of their battle. The pain of incurring blows and the satisfaction of inflicting them. The sadistic delight of reminiscing about his time as a prison rapist. The moment when it all changes and he realizes he’s in trouble, deep trouble. The desperate decision to pull a gun and settle things for good and all. The rushed in-the-moment thinking that occurs when you feel you’re at immediate risk of death. The pain in his throat. Oblivion. From lighting up the night with his malice to floating face-down dead in a river, in the time it takes the Beatles to do the “na na na nanana na” part of “Hey Jude.” Take a sad song and make it wetter.