Steel Frontier (1995)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Fantastic!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Steel Frontier tries ever so desperately to be a stylish spaghetti western to the likes of High Plains Drifter but ends up being an embarrassment to the likes of Spice World. God, the way the actors were performing, they thought they were making the movie of the century. They all suck, and whoever wrote their dialogue is a moron. Ugh! This movie is Mad Max meets High Plains Drifter if it were directed by a retard. Nothing good exists within this cesspool of butt. Avoid.

Steel Frontier brings us to a stereotypical post-apocalyptic future of sorts. It conjures up a man without a name or title (Joe Lara) beyond that of a "drifter," similar to Clint Eastwood's versions. A gun-wielding vagabond on a spiffy motorcycle who facially resembles Jesus Christ wandering through a toxic wasteland of society reduced to rubble and sand. At first glimpse, he finds a dying man with both legs torn off left to die in the middle of desert. This dying man pleads to the stranger to quickly end his life, as the stranger ponders over him for a few brief moments and decides...As the film's introduction continues, a recovering town by the name of New Hope shows a community of people ambitiously moving around tires, which now are being used as a natural resource (film does not elaborate on that, it does not really need to in the given context), as a harbinger of Mad-Max styled vehicles (seemingly gang members) approach the timid town of citizens.Once the vehicles arrive, we start to see all sorts of random odd-balls armed with rifles and pistols step out of the vehicle and ensure their grandiose of chaos on these innocent people, while the supposed leader of the outfit, General J.W. Quantrell (Brion James) casually enters into a barber shop with a rather frightened barber.The town's police force enters the scene, and is obliterated in mere minutes. After the General's done with his shave in the barber shop, he comes out to proclaim the town, as a (self) designated military outpost under the United Regime. Later, we see him discussing plans for new leadership for the town, as he dresses down the cowardly Mayor Kissmich (Quinn Morrison) who was nowhere to be found, during the siege. The General appoints his son as the #1 leadership of the town a little to the chagrin of Ackett (Bo Svenson).A few of the town's henchmen ride out onto the dusty roads to find runaways, and more or less runs into their possible Grim Reaper...the long-haired vagabond on the motorcycle. The henchmen taken by surprise to find someone crazy enough to be hanging out in such dangerous and desolate desert all by themselves with no care in a doomed world. One can observe fairly quickly that stranger is very much toying and play childish games with them. A stereotypical, but yet very excellent choreographed action car chase takes place. The stranger slips up... or does he? He enters the town as a man that no one has seen, before and the chaos really hits up. The film borrows elements from The Man with No Name and the Mad Max series, but it holds its own water very well. The ending actually turns out be a bit of surprise, and kind of ironic ... not quite as it seemed at the beginning of the film. The action scenes remain top-notch and exhilarating, as usual like with most PM action produced films. The characters are actually well-written for what most would consider to be a run-of-the-mill B-movie.

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.

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.