Written and Directed by Robert Boris
Starring Martin Kove, Sela Ward and Soon-Tek Oh
Rated R
Runtime: 95 minutes
Now available on Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber

by Billy Russell, Staff Writer 

“You don’t recruit John Steele, you unleash him.”

To me, movies like Steele Justice are like comfort food.  It’s violent enough to get an easy R-rating by the MPAA, but not so drenched in blood and guts that it can’t be easily trimmed to show on network TV on some lazy Sunday early afternoon airtime.  It’s action-packed enough to be thrilling, but not such a nonstop ride that it becomes exhausting.  It knows when to slow down to give depth to the story, and its characters, but the movie is self-aware enough to know what we’re there for.

Steele Justice is one of those “meets” movies.  You know the kind I mean.  You can practically picture the pitch meeting where someone describes it as, “It’s like Rambo meets Death Wish!”  It feels like a kinder, gentler version of The Executioner, one that isn’t swimming in the grime and filth of 1980s urban decay.  Steele Justice feels more like it would belong in the Cannon Pictures family like American Ninja.  

The film begins at the end of the Vietnam War, a vision of the war that looks like it was filmed entirely on sets.  It looks phony.  The underground caves look devoid of dirt.  They look like they were molded for a Disneyland attraction.  But to get hung up on such details is to miss the point of a movie like this.  It isn’t reality.  It’s a total fantasy.  That’s why, even though this movie spans decades, everyone we meet in the Vietnam prologue will all live within 25 miles of each other at the conclusion.  

John Steele, played by Martin Kove of The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai, establishes himself early as a hero who doesn’t give a damn about your rules, but has his own strict moral set.  He’s an anti-hero that never veers into territory that’s too dark.  In ‘Nam, he’ll disobey direct orders and wound a Vietnamese general who’s taking dirty money, but he does it to save a friend.  He’ll beat up a cop, but only because he’s wanted for the crime of saving horses from being slaughtered.  He’s a good guy, through and through, but he can’t keep a job and his ex-wife (Sela Ward) is constantly having to bail him out of sticky situations, while she sighs and makes wisecracks under her breath about him.

After John Steele’s tour in Vietnam, he putters around back home in the U.S., working odd jobs.  He was, we learn, a cop at some point, but it didn’t work out for him and he was let go.  His friend from the war, Lee Van Minh, however, has made detective, and he’s working on bringing down the Southern California Vietnamese Mafia, who, of course, come gunning for him.  And that’s when the bad guys will have to learn the true meaning of the tagline, “You don’t recruit John Steele, you unleash him.”

With his friend and ex-partner dead, John Steele carves a bloody path of revenge to get to those responsible.  He is also responsible for protecting Lee’s daughter, Cami, who I suppose is a teenager, but dresses like a five-year-old, complete with oversized dress and bows in her hair, but looks anywhere between 25 and 30.

By the time the climax arrives, we will finally have all of our questions about the film’s own version of Chekov’s Gun answered.  In this case, it’s a snake named Three-Step, as in, when you get bit, you take three steps, then you succumb to its poison and die.  Is Steele’s Snake for real, or is it just for show?  Would he really wear a snake that poisonous as a necklace?  Could a snake even live that long, as we see it throughout the entire timeline of events, from beginning to end?

You know what you’re getting into with a film like Steele Justice.  You’re not getting high art, and you’re not getting a movie that rewrites the rules of how action movies are made.  It’s not a trailblazing entry into the action genre like The Terminator.  It is absolutely beholden to its formulas, and it wears that on its sleeve.  It takes a well-known set of cliches and has fun with them.  Along the way there will be ridiculous highs, such as a bad guy being dispatched not only by being dropped by a great height, but exploding right before hitting the ground.  There will be a fight at a cemetery during a funeral.  And there will be such amazing bits of dialogue as, “You murdering morons!” as John Steele cradles his dying friend.

It almost plays like a spoof of the genre, like an extended scene from McBain, the popular action films of The Simpsons universe, except that it’s completely earnest—which is part of the movie’s charm.  It is 100% sincere, and it makes a difference.  I know I sound like I’m being hard on Steele Justice, but it’s extremely enjoyable, and the ridiculousness of the movie seems carefully calibrated.  It doesn’t veer too extreme in any direction and balances its tones well.  And it doesn’t hurt to have this supporting cast.  Ronny Cox is the understanding cop, whose career would be defined by villainy that same year with RoboCop.  Bernie Casey is another good-hearted cop who wants to help put things right.  Once cliche this movie doesn’t adhere to is the gruff police chief who balks at the hero for not doing things by the book.

The Blu-ray, courtesy of Kino Lorber, looks and sounds fantastic.  There aren’t a lot of special features on the disc, but there is a trailer, and an audio commentary featuring Martin Kove himself, and the film’s writer/director, Robert Boris.  I did listen to a bit of the commentary and Kove and Boris are enjoying themselves watching the movie they made together over 30 years ago, laughing about silly plot twists and events even they deem “over-the-top.”