Pssst, want to check out Steel in our new look?
Information
- Year
- 1997
- Runtime
- 97 min.
- Director
- Kenneth Johnson
- Genres
- Action, Crime, Sci-Fi
- Rating *
- 2.8
- Votes *
- 9,073
- Checks
- 649
- Favs
- 3
- Dislikes
- 68
- Favs/checks
- 0.5% (1:216)
- Favs/dislikes
- 1:23
Top comments
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xillicis
Potentially one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my entire life. 10 years 11 months ago -
Siskoid
I covered an issue of the Steel comics series on a podcast recently, and my co-host and I sort of convinced ourselves to watch the Steel movie before the next episode. Well, guys, IT'S REALLY NOT THAT BAD! Obviously, it's no Iron Man. Or it's Iron Man on a TV budget, made by a TV director. So Steel is not gonna fly, and he'll have to lean heavily into the "street" elements from his series. I always felt the character should be one of DC's big guns, and in the comics, relegating him to fighting street crime in Washington DC (albeit, with a plot similar to this one where the gangs got super-guns) was a waste. In the movie, they don't really have a choice. Let's get it out of the way, Shaquille O'Neal is not a good actor nor a strong screen presence. He's still watchable though, and I did like the basketball joke the first time they did it (the gag goes on too long and ends on a ridiculous sequence with a 20-second fuse grenade). Generally, I like the comedy beats, whether it's grandma's soufflé, or whatever. The best part of the movie for me was X-Files' Annabeth Gish as the "guy in the chair" - there's something to a superhero movie where the heroic cast is mostly black, with a disabled woman in the #2 role - who's really the heart of the story. Richard Roundtree is in there in a mentor capacity as well. Judd Nelson and the other sneering villains, there's no getting behind, and I admit that when Shaq puts the costume on, the movie gets worse and not better, because it looks kind of stupid. If I'd seen this in a theater, I would have been angry. On a TV set, taking it as superhero exploitation in the style of The Guyver or various attempts at superhero TV show pilots in the '90s, it's perfectly fine. 3 years 8 months ago