STEELE JUSTICE (1987)
Rating: 1.5 on 4 / Buy the VHS here
Tagline: When the police needed someone to stop the Vietnamese Mafia, there was only one choice…
Directed by Robert Boris
Starring Martin Kove, Sela Ward, Ronny Cox.
THE KILL:
It’s the mid-80s and action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone are at the top of their game with films like RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and COMMANDO sweeping up the box office glory. The formula seems simple: have a macho man go shirtless for 90 minutes blowing people away using various arsenal and saving the day from evil ex-military personnel. Sounds easy, right? Director Robert Boris thought so, but proved that there’s more to being a classic 80s action movie than that.
STEELE JUSTICE is an example of the perfect action formula gone horribly wrong–so wrong that it may be just as entertaining as some of the best action flicks around, but for all the wrong reasons. Martin Kove is John Steele, hot off his roles as the a-hole karate instructor from the KARATE KID movies, and rocking the Schwarzenegger / Stallone look to a T. Except his body isn’t nearly as chiseled, he doesn’t have an ounce of charisma going for him, and he takes himself WAY too seriously. Also, for an ex-karate instructor, he’s the worse fighter you’ve ever seen.
Steele’s so badass that while he’s in Vietnam he kills a bunch of the enemy while wearing his pet snake around his neck. Venomous pet snake, at that (as we find out later). So while he’s shooting knives at people and using automatic rifles, he wears this red and black snake like a necklace. See? Badass. After he comes back from Vietnam he’s so badass that he can’t hold a steady job, even a horse-delivery job where he unknowingly delivers horses for feed meat. Wait–kill horses? Steele’s man enough to say ‘Eff That!’ and sets the horses free. That’s just the kind of badass he is.
But though the goofiness is the layout of your classic action movie. There’s the big-headed a-hole of a police chief played masterfully by Ronny Cox. There’s the sexy love-interest who has more class than Steele could ever imagine in a pre-famous Sela Ward. Soon Tek-Oh plays the ex-General now business man / drug lord with the best of them. This guy can even pull off walking around in a kimono / dress while mackin’ on some hot blonde in a bikini. That’s the sign of a true villain right there. Oh, and that asian henchman seen eating a Snickers in DIE HARD also shows up as a henchman here. He doesn’t eat Snickers, though. But he DOES hide behind a fake plant for cover in a gun fight!
Other action cliches show up throughout as well: music video montage leading up to an action sequence? Check (see bottom clip). Work-out / arming one-self to rockin’ 80s tunes sequence? Check. Shoot-out at a drug bust gone wrong in some industrial warehouse with no one else around for miles? Check. A car / foot race where the dude on foot actually catches the car? Check. A bar fight, a jail fight, a street fight, and just about any other kind of fight? Check. And maybe best of all, when someone doesn’t tell you what you want to know, there’s the classic drive your car through the building and demand answers sequence here as well.
So why doesn’t it work? Cheesy dialogue runs rampant throughout (too cheesy, even for an 80s action movie), the budget is so low that the sets look cheap, and every action sequence is sloppy in its construction and execution. But mostly it’s Kove aka Steele himself, a macho man who isn’t quite macho enough trying to be badass, trying to be the next action hero, and trying so hard that he takes himself–and the movie–too seriously. He’s a horrible actor, he’s way too over the top, and he doesn’t have the timing or the cool personality to be able to pull a movie like this off.
I can easily see STEELE JUSTICE working as a Chuck Norris vehicle. But as a RAMBO / COMMANDO hybrid it fails miserably. And yet, beyond the awfulness of it all, it’s still an entertaining little action flick. It’s so bad that it’s funny, there’s always a moment of cheesiness that demands a laugh even when it’s supposed to be serious, and it rocks a relatively high body count, as it was made in the era of shooting first, killing lots of people, then asking questions… or not. For a good time, seek out some… STEELE JUSTICE!!!
TOP DEATH: Blowing a man up in mid-air as they’re falling to their death is a classic way to kill the bad guy, and that’s exactly what Steele does.
TOP ACTION SCENE: Steele takes out an entire jail cell full of convicts after only getting his ass kicked a little. Then when the cop comes in to investigate, he kicks his ass and escapes. Now there’s some Steele Justice if I ever saw some…
TOP HOMOEROTIC MOMENT: Steele’s a man’s man, so when he and his best friend are having a deep conversation while Steele is taking a bath (naked and without much suds to cover up, mind you), then… well, ok, there’s something a little gay about that. Plus, Steele loves to be shirtless.
FEMALE EXPLOITATION: Sela Ward is hot and younger than I’ve ever seen her before, but she keeps her clothes on from beginning to end. Surprisingly enough, not one strip club was visited throughout the entire picture.
TOP LINE/DIALOGUE:
Kwan (in a stand-off with Sela Ward as a hostage): I still have the edge
Steele: You call that an edge?
Kwan: I believe you’re talking about your wife.
Steele: Ex-wife.
Sela Ward: What do you mean, ‘ex-wife’?
Steele: I mean you make a lousy shield.
DRINKING GAME: Every time Martin Kove takes himself too seriously, you have to drink!
TRIVIA: STEELE JUSTICE is only available on On Demand and on used copies of VHS. Maybe this will push MGM to release it on DVD and Blu-ray.