My review was written in April 1987 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.
It's rather difficult to tell whether writer-director Robert Boris is playing it straight with "Steele Justice", a cornball actioner in which the unintentional laughs come fast and furious. Grindhouse fans are likely to be confused.
Martin Kove toplines as John Steele, the umpteenth Vietnam ve back home in L. A. with a problem. South Vietnamese General Kwan (Soon-Teck Oh) betrayed his unit back in 1975 and is now a California big shot posing as a philanthropist but actually heading up a drug ring, assisted by his sadistic son Pham (Peter Kwong).
Things come to a head when Steele's best pal from Vietnam, Lee Van Minh (Robert Kim) and his family are murdered by Pham, with the cute daughter Cami (Jan Gan Boyd) surviving. Steele whips into action and bodies pile up.
Format might have made for an acceptable, routine film noir, but Boris includes a wealth of silly material that causes the film's credibility to evaporate. Most obvious gaffe is a large-scale central sequence of guest star Astrid Plane warbling in a music video shoot (replete with Jeff Kutash choreography) directed by Steele's beautiful ex-wife (Sela Ward). The oriental gangsters and a squad of good guys show up, and it is the hapless chorus line that gets mowed down in machine gun fire. Producer John Strong likewise emphasized a hard rock score in a previous effort, "Savage Streets", but it doesn't help matters this time.
Kove's acting is one-note, a surly sneer and more bare-chested scenes than William Shatner or Charlton Heston in the '60s.
Bernie Casey lends strength and wry humor as a cop pal of Steele's while poor Ronny Cox as the police chief looks like he strayed in from the set of "Beverly Hills Cop II", even wearing the same sports jacket. Oddball casting has soap opera stars popping in, Sarah Douglas as a district attorney, and cast against type, Shannon Tweed as a beautiful gangster and Joseph Campanella as another bad guy. Worst decision was to have Jan Gan Boyd, recently impressive as an adult in "Assaassination" (replete with a tasteful sex scene with Charles Bronson) and "A Chorus Line", fitted out here with pigtails as a whiny little girl.
Tech credits are good.
