We’re in some kind of post-apocalyptic world, though, taking the handful of
hints the film drops about the world before, perhaps not a post-apocalyptic
Earth. So much is clear: there was some kind of war, and eternal winds have
turned the world, or at least the part of it we get to see, into a windy
wasteland.
Our protagonist is a nameless wanderer (Patrick Swayze) and former
high-ranking soldier spending his time wandering the wastelands, meditating
while standing on his head and fighting off the only mutants the film bothers
with including; all to deal with his PTSD, one supposes. However, when he meets
his old teacher (John Fujioka) only to witness him being murdered by
professional assassin Sho (Christopher Neame wearing a very excited looking
hairpiece), he ambles after the killers, eventually ending up on the farm of
Kasha (Lisa Niemi), where he hires on as a farmhand.
He’s at exactly the right place, too, for Sho is the preferred hired assassin
of local bad guy Damnil (Anthony Zerbe) who is in the classic bad guy business
of trying to take over a small community with violence. And that’s without
Damnil knowing Kasha’s secret: her lands include a secret underground source of
clean water. Clean water, mind you, she plans to provide to the whole community
for free soon enough. Looks like Shane, ahem, Swayze, will have to use his
powers of violence for good while also falling for Kasha, and playing
replacement dad for her son.
As post-apocalyptic westerns – and this really is a thinly veiled variation
on
Shane and other films where a violent stranger arrives in a little
town, finds peace for a short time and then has to solve bad guy troubles with
his old violent ways only to drift away again afterwards – go,
Steel
Dawn is a pretty good one. As a friend of the goofier side of the
post-apocalyptic divide, one can be a little disappointed that the sand-digging
mutants in the film’s prologue are the only truly Italian-apocalypse-style weird
bit
Steel Dawn delivers, but the film’s straighter soul works out
fairly well for it. And hey, straighter doesn’t mean there’s anybody here not
dressing either in weird rags or in weird rags with leather pauldrons and of
course other assorted Duran Duran music video leather bits, nor do we have to
miss men wearing mop-shaped things where we humans have hair (best in class here
is obviously Neame’s hair-thing even the less imaginative will suspect of one
day just packing up its bags and crawling away, leaving a bald man behind). In
fact, the lack of mutants – as well as firearms and even bows for some reason –
does clearly convince the film to replace other post-apocalyptic mainstays as
well. So no dune buggies this time around but wind-powered dune buggies that
move so slow you’d think people would rather walk – there’s still even a race of
a sort – and suggestions of the rests of a bizarre warrior culture in this
place’s military that has nothing whatsoever to do with the one in our world.
Also, Brion James is playing a good guy.
Lance Hool’s direction isn’t anything to write home about, competently
plugging away at Doug Lefler’s script without demonstrating much style but also
showing himself to be just competent enough to handle things decently, as well
as clever enough to understand that a good desert shot means instant atmosphere.
The script is mostly competent too, with a couple of fun ideas, a couple genre
standards executed well, and with some curious moments like the randomly
appearing and disappearing dog Swayze befriends that has no function at all in
the film except to suggest that our hero, probably, doesn’t eat dogs but shares
his food with them. Or the fact that it can’t seem to decide if Sho is an
honourable assassin or not, and so has him jumping merrily from honourable to
dishonourable while Neame is chewing the scenery just as merrily.
The action scenes are fun, making good use of the fact that Swayze’s dancer
background makes him a natural for screen fighting (I’d argue dancers are better
basic material than many non-screen/stage trained martial artists for this).
We’re not talking Hong Kong levels of choreography here, obviously, but the
fights are much better than clean punch-ups.
At this point in his career, Swayze is in full sway of his soft macho
persona, generally selling the softer parts of his character a bit better than
the machismo. Though on the machismo side, he has a note-perfect scene where he
encounters Damnil and his henchmen while bathing and very naked that gives extra
tough guy points. Swayze certainly makes a more convincing romantic actor than
most guys you’ll see playing the lead in action movies of any era, so the
romance part of the film actually feels like more than a beat the plot has to
hit. Throw Swayze into a pool of character actors for every other role like
Steel Dawn does, and he certainly gets my seal of approval.
Honestly, what more could I ask of a post-apocalyptic western without
guns?