I almost hate to admit this, but I've wanted to see this movie for years. I shit you not. I skipped the movie during its theaterical run as a kid because, well, it looked stupid (and that was coming from someone who thought Batman and Robin was friggin' awesome at the time),… More
I almost hate to admit this, but I've wanted to see this movie for years. I shit you not. I skipped the movie during its theaterical run as a kid because, well, it looked stupid (and that was coming from someone who thought Batman and Robin was friggin' awesome at the time), and thereafter it stayed off my radar for a while. But then something funny happened (in the sense of being totally inexplicable): I came to like crappy movies. Well, perhaps I should be more specific- I came to like crappy COMIC BOOK movies. I love good comic movies, but I've found that a seemingly endless font of amusement can be dug up by checking out those superhero stories that just didn't translate well onto the big screen. And by all accounts, Steel was the crappiest of them all, the king of the shit pile. This is a movie that was so badly received, it STILL isn't available on DVD. HOWARD THE DUCK is available on DVD, for God's sake! And since I haven't had a VCR since late 2002, the only way I could actually WATCH this thing was to download it online (God bless the Internet- keeping shitty movies alive)- ILLEGALLY (oh noes!). Was it as bad as it's made out to be? Well... yes and no. Don't get me wrong, this is a mind-numbing, morale-crushing, will-sapping blight of a movie, but I don't think it's as bad as, say, Catwoman (at least it's directed well enough, technically speaking)... and it's way better than Howard the f%$#ing Duck. The movie revolves around John Henry Irons, a brilliant weapons designer who builds a revolutionary sonic energy gun for the U.S. government (which means, note, that Shaquille O'Neal is playing a genius-level physicist-slash-electronics-engineer. Strike one, movie!). When a demonstration of his weapon goes horribly, horribly wrong, paralyzing his good friend/ambiguous love interest Susan Sparks, Irons quits the service and moves back into his grandma's house (seriously), taking a job as a metalworker. But when Nathaniel Burke, the soldier resposible for the weapons malfunction, decides to take the design and manufacture the weapons for the private sector (i.e. street gangs and, eventually, international terrorists), Irons reunites with Sparks and, with the aid of the up-to-this-moment-unseen-and-unreferred-to Uncle Joe and his seemingly inexhaustible material resources (courtesy of the junkyard they turn into their base of operations), fashions a suit of armor to turn the Shaq Attack into a walking gangland deterrent, complete with a giant sledgehammer that seems to have every function built into it except for the ability to hammer things. Add in an annoying subplot about Irons' kid something-or-other (brother? nephew?) and the ridiculous plot detail that Burke is distributing the weapons through an arcade game manufacturer, and you've got a pretty good picture of the mediocrity that this film brings to the table. Before watching this, I had never had the opportunity to see Shaquille O'Neal perform as an actor, and I must say I now consider that a great mercy. Shaq is a terrible, horrible, hideous, god-awful- well, he's bad, alright? He can act with all the sincerity and nuance that you would expect from a basketball player turned actor. As John Henry Irons, Shaq is a wooden facade of a human being, whose "emotions" consist of exaggerated facial expressions accompanied by monotone inflections and who comes across as sort of an enormous sixth grader- all wiggly eyebrows, goofy smiles and bursts of petulent anger. It's a shame that such an excellent character is mishandled so greatly; in the comics, Irons is a good man tormented by bad decisions and a guilty conscience, who is inspired by Superman to make something of his life- a man searching for redemption. Disappointingly, the film eliminates all of his most potent character mechanics, rendering him as just a tool of the plot, a support pylon in the architecture of the narrative (okay, obviously I love metaphors). His motivations are questionable (why would a pacifist join the army in the first place?), his relationships are ill-defined (is Sparks his girlfriend or his best friend? And what's up with the kid?), and God damn it, he's played by Shaq- this movie was doomed from the get-go. Making matters worse is the who-gives-a-crap antagonist Nathaniel Burke, played by Judd Nelson. JUDD NELSON is the VILLAIN, for christssakes! And all he is is a slimy, maniacal gun-runner. Truly terrifying threat there. Nelson gets a little hammy and heavy-handed in the part, and can you blame him? The character is like a paper cut-out, all evil-gun-running plans and no personality. Maybe an actor with some gravitas could have done something with the part (Jeremy Irons? Jason Issacs?), but I guess they were looking for someone who would be as lame a villain as Shaq is a hero. The only silver lining in this shit-tornado (if that makes any sense) would have to be Annabeth Gish's performance in the role of Susan "Sparky" Sparks; I don't think anyone told her just how bad this movie was going to be, because she does a really great job. Sparks' character arc is the most interesting in the film: she starts as an army engineer and something-or-other of John Henry Irons (THINK, writers- you can't just explain the relationships in the script text without mentioning them somewhere in the dialogue) until the accident at the demonstration paralyzes her from the waist down. At first she pities herself and withdraws into depression, but Irons manages to get through to her by giving her a new mission and purpose, showing her that her life isn't over just because she can't walk. Gish must be one hell of an actress, because in all the scenes where she trades banter with Shaq, she seems genuinely charmed by the lumbering oaf as he blurts out his monotone drivel with all the charisma of a hunk of balsa wood- she even somehow makes their stupid touching-finger handshake seem endearing (to the character, at least). THAT takes talent. Better still, she even has an action scene- IN A WHEELCHAIR. Apparently, Sparks modified her chair with laser blasters, a sonic gun, and a nitrous boost, which officially makes her the coolest character in the movie (this would be one of the only cases where a sequel featuring only a supporting character would be an improvement). Then, there's Uncle Joe, the junkyard owner. Uncle Joe has no reason to be in the movie, except to serve as a role for Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft (note the lame Shaft jokes riddled through the film). I guess he's kind of the facilitator of the plot- they have to get the materials for this crap from somewhere- but though he's dramatically supposed to serve both as wise elder council and comic relief for the characters, he actually supplies neither. He's just annoying. And the less said about Irma P. Hall as Grandma Odessa or Ray J. as Martin, Irons' brothercousinnephewson (exposition! Never thought I'd be asking for it!), the better- it's kind of insulting how they shoehorn African-American family stereotypes (the wacky matriarch! The good-natured kid who falls in with the wrong crowd!) into a superhero film just because the main character is black, but I'll give them a pass on this... they did it in the comics, too. The script... eh, I want to say it wasn't all that bad, but yeah, it was. Why is the biggest arms dealer in the L.A. using a video game manufacturer as a front? Could they really put together a secret headquarters and all that equipment out of just junk? Who are these supporting cast members supposed to be, dammit?! The dialogue is unbelievably bad, and I think that would be true even if it wasn't Shaq saying it; the plot is threadbare, taking too long to get started and burning out before it picks up any momentum (ah, the third-act rush- a common malady in comic book movies). Worse than Kenneth Johnson's writing, though, would be Kenneth Johnson's direction: the shots are all pretty much dead on or, at best, low angles, the action scenes are clunky and uninteresting, the characterizations are absurd (what's with the gang member with the eye patch and the leather fetish gear? And what the HELL's up with the thug with the cartoonishly deep voice? He sounds like he's trying to imitate the Jolly Green Giant!), the pace is glacial- nothing comes together in this movie. The costumes are bizarre and cheap-looking; the Steel suit is clearly made of rubber (the jaw flexes when he talks), and it provides no protection for his mouth (which, of course, miraculously never gets hit as he's assaulted with a hail of bullets. Not even a scratch.). The music is declamatory in the extreme, mixing brass-heavy orchestra with synth hip-hop, I guess to mirror the film's fusion of superheroes and crappy action films (it actually sounds better than it... sounds...). It's a shame that Johnson, the man who made the Incredible Hulk into a T.V. sensation, could fail so spectacularly on only his second try at a comic book character... but then, as he's publicly stated that he doesn't care for superheroes (he saw the Hulk as a Jekyll-and-Hyde monster story, and Steel as an urban knight in shining armor), I suppose it makes more than a little sense. Steel is like a train wreck of awful, a film so horrendous that it defies attempts to watch it all the way through (I had to watch in in three segments, so great was the shit). Shaq only ever did two movies (as a lead, not a cameo), and think about it- THIS one was the one that killed his acting career. Not Kazaam. THIS. There's a reason they never put it out on DVD. A textbook example of vapid Hollywood commercialism, Steel is a fun movie to rip to pieces and worth the watch for the absurdity alone, but if you're looking for anything with substance, I suggest you let this lost cinematic relic stay lost.
(oh, and by the way, as of April 2010, Steel IS now available on DVD- as part of Warner Bros. made-to-order Warner Archives collection. You can only get it by ordering it online. And yes, thanks to my compulsive superhero-completist tendencies and my general love of bad movies, I ordered it as soon as I learned this. I think I need help.)
