Comeuppance Reviews In a post-apocalyptic future, survivors live in a dirty makeshift town named New Hope. It seems tires are valuable so workers toil away in the tire yards. One day, a band of marauders known as "The Deathriders" roll into town. Through violent tactics, they sack the town of New Hope and institute J.W. Quantrell (James) as leader. Quantrell then makes his son, Julius (Victor) Mayor. Their plan is to institute what they call the "United Regime". But a savior arrives in the form of a gunfighter named Yuma (Lara). He pits various factions against each other (not forgetting about Bo Svenson as Ackett, Kane Hodder as Kinton and Brian Huckeba as the immortal and show-stealing "Chickenboy"). Yuma attempts to save the lives of Sarah (Foster) and her young son as she is a widow trying to make it in this tough world. But there are many pitfalls along the way, not the least of which are desert-dwelling cannibals named "Roach Eaters". Will Yuma save the day and ride off into the sunset?PM attempts to marry two genres here: the post-apocalyptic actioner (in the vein of the Mad Max series but perfected by the Italians) and the Spaghetti Western (started and perfected by the Italians) with generally entertaining results. Like in the Italian post-ap's, cars have wacky contraptions glued to them and people wear wacky outfits. But because this is a PM, it has much more action than the usual slog. There's pretty much non-stop shooting, chases, stunts, fights and blow-ups. There's even minimal dialogue at the outset of the movie, telling the story mainly visually, which is difficult to do. But this is a PM synthesis of Yojimbo (1961), hence For A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For A Few Dollars More (1965) (and any number of Clint Eastwood's 60's/70's output - including a bus chase reminiscent of The Gauntlet, 1977) along with a futuristic twist. So you get what's going on here.Even the name "Steel Frontier" indicates what you're in for: "Steel" indicating the future and "Frontier" indicating the Western. There's also some biblical symbolism worked into the storyline, a lot of which revolves around Joe Lara looking especially like Jesus this time around. He puts in an especially charming performance - this really is Lara at his absolute best. A location in the movie is even reminiscent of fellow Lara vehicle American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993). Maybe he lives in that industrial wasteland for real. You know Kane Hodder because he wears a hat with a Jason logo on it, and the guy who plays Julius has orange hair, making him, naturally, "Orange Julius". Svenson puts in a standard performance. Brion James should have been more involved.Because there is terminology such as "The Drylands" and the tire farmers are derisively known as "tire suckers", this would seem to be PM's Neon City (1991). But Steel Frontier is far better than that movie. To see PM's take on not one, but two classic genres together in one film, don't hesitate to see Steel Frontier. And did we mention Chickenboy?For more action insanity, drop by: www.comeuppancereviews.com

Curtis G. I made it about 8 minutes into "Steel Frontier" before I turned it off. Then, glutton for punishment that I am, I watched some more the next day. Today I had to iron a pile of clothes, so I decided to finish the movie, and that was its own punishment. Here's what I don't understand: Robert Rodriguez and Shane Carruth each spent $7,000 on their debut features and created two remarkable movies. Yet here we have two directors with arguably way more money, and they churn out a huge, steaming pile of crap. Let me see if I can figure out the logic: "It's 'Road Warrior' but it's like a future Western. We'll get the cheapest 'actors' we can find, we'll have my mentally challenged cousin write the script, and we'll spend the budget on a bunch of explosions. We can't lose!"Seriously. I don't think even the MST3K guys could improve this. But if you insist on watching it, I recommend getting very drunk first.

Paul-b-1 It has to be said that this film is definitely one of the better "bargain bin" movies out there - I'd feel a bit cheated if I had paid £15 for it, but at about £1.50 I felt that I definitely got more than my monies worth. The film can't quite decide if it wants to be "Mad Max" or one of the Clint Eastwood "man with no name" spaghetti westerns, and as such is stacked with clichés from both. Even the manic loony who hangs out with the bad guys in "Mad Max" is there.That guy from "Blade Runner" also cops a good billing, although he only turns up at the beginning and the end of the movie.Favourite bit - for me the punch-up on top of the oil refinery - if you look closely you can see the "post-apocalyptic" rush hour traffic thundering past in the distance as the two protagonists knock seven bells out of each other.Get several lagers in, a few pizzas and sit back and enjoy what is ultimately lightweight but entertaining drivel.

tom 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.