Nov 21 2008
B+ Movie Review: Steel Dawn
When you think post-apocalyptic action movie hero, your mind doesn’t usually jump immediately to Patrick Swayze. Dancing with girls who can’t be kept in a corner, yes. Messily making pottery while making out, yes. Swinging a sword at guys in biker leathers in a hellish future of our own making, not so much.
But then agian, that’s because you’ve never seen Steel Dawn.
Swayze plays a wandering swordsman named who walks the deserts of what’s left of world after World War III. World weary, he takes up the mission of a fallen mentor who was going to a small town with a lot of trouble brewing in it. He hires on with a lady farmer named Kasha who has a secret that makes her farm very valuable, attracting the attention of a local bully/landowner who wants her land. When she won’t sell, he hires someone to persuade her, a nasty, death dealing piece of work named Sho, the man who made Swayze’s mentor “fallen”, and who sports a hairdo that makes you wonder if World War III wasn’t justified.
If this plot line sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the plot of about every third western in existence.
If anything can be said for Steel Dawn’s story its that while it lacks anything resembling complexity, it uses it’s cliches as well as it can. In addition to the aformenetioned excuse for a end of the movie showdown, we also get Kasha’s son helping to soften up Swayze’s world weary exterior and adding some humanity to the movie. There’s also a bit of conflict with Kasha’s right hand man, played by the late B movie virtuoso Brion James, who feels replaced by the new man in his boss’s life. Without watching this movie, I’m guessing you can guess which one of these guys gets kidnapped and which one gets stabbed.
This movie is a bit of a Frankenstien’s monster, a film cobbled together from existing movie plots and sewn together in a working if not terribly pretty package. While not the worst post apocalypse film to come out of the 80’s, there’s not alot to distinguish it besides having the star of Dirty Dancing in it.
Steel Dawn gets a C as it walks off into the sunset. It’s worth renting or even purchusing if you find it on the second half of a double feature DVD. Even without going MST3K on it, it’s an interesting film.
Just please, somebody explain the hair to me.
