Steele Justice

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.

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.

Beefcake actor Martin Kove joined the ranks of action genre stars with this routinely plotted but fairly amusing vehicle. Kove plays genial Vietnam veteran John Steele, who goes into action when his wartime comrade Lee Van Minh (Robert Kim), now a police detective, is assassinated along with most of his family. Helped and hindered by former colleagues like Bennett (Ronny Cox) and Tom Reese (Bernie Casey), John goes up against a wartime associate named Bon Soong Kwan (Soon-Tek Oh), who's now a drug lord in America masquerading as a crusading businessman.

I'm going to give the filmmakers (led by writer & director Robert Boris) the benefit of the doubt here, and say that the amount of laughs to be had from watching this are intentional. If one does see it as tongue in cheek, it may yield greater entertainment than if they take it seriously. "Steele Justice" does have its moments. For one thing, it stops cold for a rock video that is eventually interrupted by the ongoing battles between Steele and Kwans' minions. But the unqualified highlight occurs when Steele is shot with a poison dart, and almost nonchalantly, he removes the offending dart, sucks up and spits out the poison, and does a fine job of improvising when it comes to cauterizing the wound. The action sequences are all reasonably well done.

Kove is engaging as our sardonic hero, often to be seen with a smile on his face. Oh is an enjoyably hammy villain in the action movie tradition. Sela Ward is a lovely woman, but as the heros' ex-wife, she offers a pretty insipid performance. Ditto for Jan Gan Boyd (the young lady who was hot for Bronson in the movie "Assassination"), cast as Van Minhs' supposedly teen aged daughter. Watch this and you'll see why she never had much of a career. There's a pleasingly large amount of familiar faces in the supporting cast, although some of them have no more than cameos or walk ons: Joseph Campanella, Sarah Douglas, Peter Kwong, Al Leong, Shannon Tweed, Irene Tsu, David L. Lander, Asher Brauner, Phil Fondacaro, Kevin Gage.

Any completist of 1980s action movies should have a pretty good time with this.

Six out of 10.

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.