Road House (1989)

"Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee and he'll drop like a stone."
An infamous bouncer named James Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is hired to clean up the act at a violent nightclub, which means bad news for some of it's toughest, meanest and most nasty customers, but not everybody are taking the situtation seriously, in fact some even sees it as a challenge, and before you know it, every big shot around town wants to have a go against Dalton and his loyal crew at the Double Deuce.

As a kid, I only knew of Swayze through romantic films such as Dirty Dancing (1987) or Ghost (1990), both films that my mum loved, and I guess mostly because of Patrick, and for me I put him in the same category as another favorite of my mother, Richard Gere. Typical 80s/early 90s romantic male lead, nothing more.
But one day, my dad and I ended up seeing Road House on late night cable, and I was completely taken back, at how awesome this film was, with it's fantastic and brutal fight scenes, a whole arsenal of bad ass one-liners, stunning babes, great soundtrack, memorable villains, and so much more. 
My respect for Swayze went through the roof, and later on it just kept going, as I found out he also starred in the great action gem, Next of Kin (1989).

Produced by Joel Silver (which back then was almost like a guarantee for badass action) and directed by Rowdy Herrington, Road House comes with a strong cast of memorable faces such as Kelly Lynch, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzara (both Elliott and Gazzara starred later on in The Big Lebowski), Jeff Healey, Kathleen Wilhoite and of course Keith David.
It is one of those films that the critics seemed to all love to hate, calling it "braindead" and "flat", but the fans could not care less, as it has grown onto become one of the great cult-classics of the late 80s, and even got itself a "sequel", years later on (which I have still not seen).