Warner Archives | 1997 | 97 mins. | PG-13
At the height of his popularity in the 1990’s, basketball star Shaquille O’Neal took a shot at big screen stardom. Though Shaq has plenty of charisma to spare, I think it’s safe to say he’s not on his way to being the next Denzel Washington. In Steel, Shaq played one of the worst superheroes committed to celluloid. How bad is it? The best thing I can say is that it only wasted 97 minutes of my life. However, now courtesy of Warner Archive, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can check it out for yourself.
Steel, very loosely based on the DC comics’ character of the same name, wisely avoids incorporating the character’s past as a weapon’s designer. Instead, John Henry Irons (O’Neal) is a solider assigned to a futuristic weapons design squad. When his squad mate Burke (Judd Nelson), attempts to show off for a Senator during a weapons demonstration, he ends up killing the senator and leaving Irons’ partner, Susan “Sparky” Sparks (Annabeth Gish), a paraplegic. Irons testifies against Burke (who is discharged from the military) and retires, returning home with his grandmother and brother Martin (Ray J).
Meanwhile, with his career down the drain, Burke hatches a plan to sell Irons’ weapons to criminal gangs. Now this is where a little backstory is needed—don’t look for it in the film, because it’s not provided–during the early 90s, following the “death of Superman” comic phase, Steel was look upon as one of the possible replacement heroes. In the comics, Steel had been Superman’s sidekick and felt indebted to him because The Man of Steel had saved his life. However, this film forces the audience to infer why Steel is devoted to fighting crime. It’s never a good sign for a superhero film when the reason why someone is a superhero is never fully explained. As every fan knows, the most important part of a superhero film is when that person takes the mantle; and dons the suit for the first time. Unfortunately for Steel, everything goes downhill from there.
To begin with, the suit just doesn’t look good; it appears to be some sort of vinyl. To make matters worse the poorly paced action sequences are dull and uninspired. Burke seems willing to get anyone involved in his master plan to sell weapons (which really makes little sense). While it’s true that Richard Roundtree’s character of Uncle Joe gets the films few memorable lines, I was left wondering how “Shaft” got caught up in this terrible flick.
Most notably, Steel has no sense of pace or real direction. With nearly 50-minutes of backstory, and a complicated plot set up that goes almost nowhere, that doesn’t leave the viewer with a whole lot to hold on to or care about. Unfortunately, by the time the credits roll, most probably won’t care about Steel, his backstory, or this film.
The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer packs a notable amount of detail with solid color reproduction. A moderate amount of grain is cast over the entire image, which only turns into strong digital noise a handful of times. Contrast is strong and the rest of the transfer remains free of digital issues.
The English Dolby surround track is not great. Dialogue is mixed a little lower than the effects and music, which are all distortion free but lack any lower frequency life.
The lone extra is the film’s theatrical trailer.
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