Stahl-Justiz

I didn't realize Martin Kove, the leader of the Cobra Kai dojo in the Karate Kid movies played John Steele in this movie until I read somebody else's review.Steele Justice was an awesome movie that is way overlooked & should be more well known then what it is.The whole time I watched it, I couldn't believe nobody turned it into a TV show back then or at least spun off a couple sequels.That would've been genius I think.I'm not going to spoil the movie for anybody else but there are a lot of things that will make you either laugh (even though it's probably not meant to) go WOW or WTF.You'll just have to watch for yourself.Watch for the music video though.It seemed like right in the middle of an action flick, they stopped to make a music video.After reading a few other Steele Justice reviews I seemed to have missed out on a few things the 1st time I watched it so now I feel the need to go back & watch it all over again.If you're an action movie fan, go watch Steele Justice.If you're not an action movie fan, go watch Steele Justice

My review was written in April 1987 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.

It's rather difficult to tell whether writer-director Robert Boris is playing it straight with "Steele Justice", a cornball actioner in which the unintentional laughs come fast and furious. Grindhouse fans are likely to be confused.

Martin Kove toplines as John Steele, the umpteenth Vietnam ve back home in L. A. with a problem. South Vietnamese General Kwan (Soon-Teck Oh) betrayed his unit back in 1975 and is now a California big shot posing as a philanthropist but actually heading up a drug ring, assisted by his sadistic son Pham (Peter Kwong).

Things come to a head when Steele's best pal from Vietnam, Lee Van Minh (Robert Kim) and his family are murdered by Pham, with the cute daughter Cami (Jan Gan Boyd) surviving. Steele whips into action and bodies pile up.

Format might have made for an acceptable, routine film noir, but Boris includes a wealth of silly material that causes the film's credibility to evaporate. Most obvious gaffe is a large-scale central sequence of guest star Astrid Plane warbling in a music video shoot (replete with Jeff Kutash choreography) directed by Steele's beautiful ex-wife (Sela Ward). The oriental gangsters and a squad of good guys show up, and it is the hapless chorus line that gets mowed down in machine gun fire. Producer John Strong likewise emphasized a hard rock score in a previous effort, "Savage Streets", but it doesn't help matters this time.

Kove's acting is one-note, a surly sneer and more bare-chested scenes than William Shatner or Charlton Heston in the '60s.

Bernie Casey lends strength and wry humor as a cop pal of Steele's while poor Ronny Cox as the police chief looks like he strayed in from the set of "Beverly Hills Cop II", even wearing the same sports jacket. Oddball casting has soap opera stars popping in, Sarah Douglas as a district attorney, and cast against type, Shannon Tweed as a beautiful gangster and Joseph Campanella as another bad guy. Worst decision was to have Jan Gan Boyd, recently impressive as an adult in "Assaassination" (replete with a tasteful sex scene with Charles Bronson) and "A Chorus Line", fitted out here with pigtails as a whiny little girl.

Tech credits are good.

Martin Kove stars as John Steele an ex-vietnam vet who becomes a one man army when his partner (and fellow vietnam vet friend) is killed by an enemy of his in Vietnam. Silly actioner which has a huge bodycount, will no doubt satisfy those craving action, but will fail to keep anyone else from squirming, or laughing for that matter (Martin Kove's wound repair scene must be seen to be believed). Soon Tech Oh does make a good villian though.

Look, I have no idea what was going on in this movie, but that's partly due to the fact that at one point, a midget cowboy, wearing sunglasses in a bar, sitting by himself, and rocking to some random country band had me so excited, that I basically had to sign up on IMDb so I could tell everyone that this movie has a midget cowboy in it.

I thank the Netflix Gods for his sublime performance.

Oh, and apparently, all Asians know martial arts, and then they use the arts whenever they're least needed (I've heard this is true).

It certainly isn't Citizen Kane (that movie was in black in white), but it is the greatest movie ever made in color (named Steele Justice).

Well i'm surprised there aren't more comments for this film, seems that most people on here are bothered by the fact that's not particularly original, so what? Being unoriginal does not automatically make a film bad, and for the person who was bothered by the racist undertones, no offense pal but you're taking the film WAAAYYYY too seriously, this is the type of film were you don't think about logic and you just lay back and enjoy the mindless action. Kove is pretty bad ass in his role and i'm disappointed he didn't get the chance to star in more of these types of films then he did, though he did eventually end up in one of the Project:Shadowchaser films which i'll try and check out in the future, as it stands this film is pretty mindless and forgettable, but for people like me who couldn't care less about intelligence in films, that's hardly a bad thing.