Steel - Der stählerne Held

Steel is one of those films where you constantly have to keep telling yourself "this is NOT a TV movie". A cheap, outrageously bad superhero vehicle for the acting... er... talents?... of 7'1 basketball player Shaquille O'Neal.

Commendably, the film does actually have three clear acts, and Steel's emergence, though underplayed, doesn't happen for over forty minutes. In-jokes are a-plenty, as it mentions Batman, Superman, Jerry Maguire ("show me the money!") and three instances of John Irons (O'Neal) having to net basketballs. The final time sees a life-threatening toss of a grenade. A lousy basketball player throughout, Shaq gets to quip "I never make these". Or would you prefer Richard Roundtree as Uncle Joe, who designs Steel's hammer for him? "I did the metalwork," he explains, "I especially like the shaft." Cue lots of double-takes and knowing glances, with Roundtree looking round, hands in the air, proclaiming "what?"

The special effects are reasonable for tv movie land, but, as this is (pinch me, I must be imagining it) a real cinema movie, they're quite cheap. Steel is badly written, contains atrocious dialogue, is poorly acted, shabbily directed and with an overbearing, repetitive musical score. It is, of course, tremendously entertaining.

I rented this film at Hollywood Video. I expected humongo crap. I was wrong.

While Shaq isn't the greatest actor (or basketball player- go spurs go!) the rest of the cast us pretty good. I enjoyed the antagonistic Nathaniel and the impress Henry family.

Yes, the music is not the best, but it's not awful.

The Bottom Line: An enjoyable action movie experience! 6/10 Chili Peppers!!!

James Berardinelli gave this 2/4 stars - more than he gave "Trees Lounge." I find that hard to believe. This is one of the worst films I have ever seen in my entire lifetime, and I've seen quite a few.

It's yet another comic-book-adaptation based on a series that was unpopular to begin with. Shaq does his Attack as Steel, a superhero who runs around very slow in a heavy metal suit.

Whereas Spidey and Batman, et al, all have their special powers, Steel really just has a bulletproof metal suit - the "wire shooter" is a rip-off of the device used by Michael Keaton in "Batman." It attaches itself to a building and up, up and away he goes! However, the device moves at an astonishingly slow pace. Why didn't the cops just shoot him instead of standing there for over thirty seconds (yes, I counted) watching him pulled up into the air by a thin thread?

No matter. This movie is awful. Not even Richard Roundtree can save it.

And what's with the wheelchair lady?

Why, Bender, why?

As an enormous Superman fan I picked this video up (for less than 5 dollars) just to add to my collection. I know it had nothing to do with the actual origins of the DC Comics Steel which came from the Death of Superman story but still has some similarities. The story revolves around John Henry Irons, played of course by Shaq, an army Lieutenant who worked on the creation of high tech sonic weapons along with Susan Sparks, played by Annabeth Gish, and Nathaniel Burk played by Judd Nelson. After a miscalculation leaves Susan paralyzed Irons leaves the army into civilian life. Nathaniel becomes the evil nemesis building the weapons and preparing to sell them to world arms dealers but first testing them on bank robberies with street gangs. Irons with the help of Susan referred to as Sparky and Iron's Uncle Joe played by Richard Roundtree build their own crime fighting weapons as well as a head to toe...well except for his face...outfit of steel.

The acting does get rather bad, it feels like a grade school play, and the jokes get far too reality based as so many people have pointed out. The Shaft joke just isn't funny, and the basketball references are unnecessary but that's not what wrecks the movie. What wrecks the movie is the storyline. They could so easily have based this character after the Superman origin. They made reference to the man of steel so many times that it would not have taken much to create Iron's character following the death of Superman. Shaq is not a terrible actor, there are far worse, but his physical stature makes his regular joe schmoe character almost unbelievable.

He towers above everyone and just looks silly. They never establish any sort of romance between Susan and John Irons although they hint to it, it never turns into anything. The story moves along at a good pace, and I thought Judd Nelson played a kick butt bad guy...although he played it almost sarcastically, it fit the movie really. The special effects were cheesy and obviously cheap but I can look past that. The part that bothers me the most is that his "steel" suit being bullet proof is fine but the good 5 or 6 inches on his face that was uncovered miraculously never got touched by bullets or anything else.

Plot holes are almost expected in a film like this so you have to swallow your reality to enjoy it. But sometimes if the movie isn't good enough, it's not worth swallowing anything. I don't regret watching it, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen that's for sure. 5/10

This movie could have been lifted out of the doldrums with decent dialogue. Shaq was much better this time around (as opposed to "Kazaam", although that's not saying much). Burke's "wisdom" to his gang member is absolutely laughable, and especially don't miss Shaq's awful "cool, just like you" at the beginning.

Steel did some things right; some parts they tried to make funny were genuinely funny, and the plot was pretty interesting. However, the parts where you "laugh with" the scriptwriter are pale in comparision to those where you "laugh at" the scriptwriter.

In summation...you need to see this movie.