Fronteira de Aço

Before you say Mad Max, they were making these films 20 yrs before Mel Gibson came along. Basically take any of Clint Eastwood's westerns and put it after the nuclear Holocaust. Great film for budget they had. My two gripes is the overuse of guns and gas powered vehicles. They try to justify it with a old military armory as the death riders base. But still a weak premise. And they set up a nice powered sniper rifle in the beginning but they never use it again. The best gun in the whole film is a throwaway used once to hunt down dinner. Yes most of the acting is weak and stiff but so we're 99% of these films. Also biggest continuity issue is several struggles use the clear sound of clothes being torn but after the struggle not a single new tear in their clothes.

I made it about 8 minutes into "Steel Frontier" before I turned it off. Then, glutton for punishment that I am, I watched some more the next day. Today I had to iron a pile of clothes, so I decided to finish the movie, and that was its own punishment. Here's what I don't understand: Robert Rodriguez and Shane Carruth each spent $7,000 on their debut features and created two remarkable movies. Yet here we have two directors with arguably way more money, and they churn out a huge, steaming pile of crap. Let me see if I can figure out the logic: "It's 'Road Warrior' but it's like a future Western. We'll get the cheapest 'actors' we can find, we'll have my mentally challenged cousin write the script, and we'll spend the budget on a bunch of explosions. We can't lose!"

Seriously. I don't think even the MST3K guys could improve this. But if you insist on watching it, I recommend getting very drunk first.

It's another one of those universes where they drive around so they can find gas so they can -- drive around some more.

No-goodniks take over a town. Mysterious stranger shows up, takes on the no-goodniks. We've seen it all before, in a variety of places, including some bits which seem to be lifted directly from a book series I could name. "Deathriders", yeah, right.

*Lots* of car chases, explosions, crashes, fights; improbable gunplay, improbable futuristic gadgets, improbable dialogue.

I'll hand it to them -- they went to a lot of trouble to set up the "society". They also tried to throw in a bit of thoughtfulness amongst the havoc. And for a virtually unknown movie, the havoc is pretty major -- lots of stunts and pyrotechnics.

It isn't perfectly awful, but this viewer finds it mighty tedious.

I'm not sure why they set these things in a post-Apocalyptic world, as there are obviously already enough ruined buildings to go around (in this case, in the California desert).

Bo Svenson goes through much of the movie looking pained, with good reason. Poor Brion James tries hard, but...

The constant barrage of explosions, gunfire, and cussin' would make this a good choice if you wanted to annoy your next door neighbors late at night.

Back onto the trade stack it goes.

Lots of action and violence in the Mad Max genre of things with a western twist. While all the acting was great, the best performance in the film is given by Brian Huckeba as the character "Chicken Boy." Much better than Vanilla Sky!

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.