You won't be disappointed!

Sadly Over-hyped

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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.

Generally, films from PM Entertainment and me don't get along (I'm thinking of LA Heat here). In my opinion they tend to stop just short of putting "I'M CRAP! DON'T BUY ME!" in fluorescent writing on the DVD cover. So you can imagine the sense of fear i felt when my friend returned from the bargain shop with this, 'Steel Frontier'. At first my suspicions seemed justified, the typical trailer which revealed most of the plot and action set-pieces was present and correct, and the opening to the film was fairly cheesy. But as it continued, something occurred to me: Steel Frontier isn't that bad. Although it's not particularly ground-breaking in any way, it's obvious that this film has a fairly big budget, due to the amount of explosions on show here, and it's these combined with the fairly non-stop action which give this film a fast pace which puts it ahead of many of its rivals. The acting on display is fairly competent too, and the presence of B movie icon Brion James in particular adds to Steel Frontier's credibility. All in all this is a film which won't particularly stick in the memory, but is a great way to pass the odd hour or two - kind of the film that wouldn't be out of place on late night sci-fi channel, for instance.

It's another one of those universes where they drive around so they can find gas so they can -- drive around some more.No-goodniks take over a town. Mysterious stranger shows up, takes on the no-goodniks. We've seen it all before, in a variety of places, including some bits which seem to be lifted directly from a book series I could name. "Deathriders", yeah, right.*Lots* of car chases, explosions, crashes, fights; improbable gunplay, improbable futuristic gadgets, improbable dialogue.I'll hand it to them -- they went to a lot of trouble to set up the "society". They also tried to throw in a bit of thoughtfulness amongst the havoc. And for a virtually unknown movie, the havoc is pretty major -- lots of stunts and pyrotechnics.It isn't perfectly awful, but this viewer finds it mighty tedious.I'm not sure why they set these things in a post-Apocalyptic world, as there are obviously already enough ruined buildings to go around (in this case, in the California desert).Bo Svenson goes through much of the movie looking pained, with good reason. Poor Brion James tries hard, but...The constant barrage of explosions, gunfire, and cussin' would make this a good choice if you wanted to annoy your next door neighbors late at night.Back onto the trade stack it goes.

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.