Steel Frontier

Honestly this is a fun Road Warrior reinterpretation. Brion James does his best and Bo Svenson has a fairly significant side role. The early car chase scene is pretty damn good! But Joe Lara's long Jesus hair is hilarious and you can tell he's kind of trying to do his best to work around it at times. The action is plentiful and well staged and there are some interesting characters - one who's so interesting you'll want him killed off as soon as he opens his mouth! But all in all quite a satisfying sci-fi action film that's certainly dumb - but they know what they're doing and everyone's having a great time. Highly enjoyable Sunday afternoon action flick.

Ok, when I rented this several years ago I had the worst expectations. Yes, the acting isn't great, and the picture itself looks dated, but as I sat there, a strange thing happened. I started to like it. The action is great and there are few scenes that make you jump. Brion James, maybe one of the greatest B-grade actors next to Bruce Campbell, is great as always. The story isn't bad either. Now I wouldn't rush out and buy it, but you won't waste your time at least watching this good b-grade post apocalyptic western.

If you take the films, Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome, and the movie Steel Dawn with Patrick Swayze, you will have a pretty good idea what the film is about. The only problems is, that the film lacks the production values of either, and represent mainly cheap copy of the former two. True, the film has plenty of action, but asks the viewer to suspend belief. No one can shoot a 50 Caliber Machine gun by holding it in his hand - and miss everything to boot, nor can you shoot at a group of people with an automatic weapon and miss the whole bunch. There is also a problem with poor editing, when the school bus flips over, it is easy enough to see the cannon used to do the job. And the lady driving the truck through it is superfluous, since she had more than enough time to stop the truck. If you are interested only in mindless action and violence then the movie is easy enough to watch. But don't expect anything on paar with Thunderdome, or even the somewhat cheap and tacky Steel Dawn.

It has to be said that this film is definitely one of the better "bargain bin" movies out there - I'd feel a bit cheated if I had paid £15 for it, but at about £1.50 I felt that I definitely got more than my monies worth.

The film can't quite decide if it wants to be "Mad Max" or one of the Clint Eastwood "man with no name" spaghetti westerns, and as such is stacked with clichés from both. Even the manic loony who hangs out with the bad guys in "Mad Max" is there.

That guy from "Blade Runner" also cops a good billing, although he only turns up at the beginning and the end of the movie.

Favourite bit - for me the punch-up on top of the oil refinery - if you look closely you can see the "post-apocalyptic" rush hour traffic thundering past in the distance as the two protagonists knock seven bells out of each other.

Get several lagers in, a few pizzas and sit back and enjoy what is ultimately lightweight but entertaining drivel.

As other reviewers have noted, this movie is a cross between (i.e. stolen from) stories we have seen before. Specifically, this looks like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter inserted into Mad Max. Remove Clint's cigar, and replace with a cigarette; remove his horse and give him a high-tech motorcycle, and voilà, an updated drifter. In this movie, the "hero" is even more blatantly a "Savior" than High Plains Drifter. Now our hero has long brown hair, suffers a wound to his left side, and his entry into town is preceded by a plea for "salvation" by the surviving townspeople--a pretty transparent reference to a "Second Coming." I watched the movie on a hot, humid morning. Sleep was impossible and upon arising at 4:30 am, there was nothing else on TV. So the movie served its purpose. While unoriginal, with characters that are almost comic caricatures, the movie is still somewhat entertaining...at least at 4:30 in the morning.