Trailer:
“He’s a Man of Steel!”
(John Henry Irons better prepare himself for that lawsuit Superman will sending him in the mail)
This is why Shaq should stick to basketball and stay the hell away from movies. This ain’t no Space Jam and he sure as hell isn’t any Michael Jordan or even The Rock for that matter. After the disaster of Batman & Robin, I guess it made sense to put out an even bigger disaster of a film in an attempt to make people temporarily forget about that other one. Well congrats to DC, they succeeded here.
The film opens on a weapons manufacturer by the name of John Henry Irons (Shaq) who creates military weapons until one of his creations nearly kills a close friend. From that point on Irons decides no more weapon building for him, and heads back home. But the thing is that it was never really the weapons fault. No, it was the work of Irons douche bag boss Nathaniel Burke who decided to switch it on full power.
Burke as a result is kicked out of the army and loses everything. So when you think of it repercussions were made and Irons really doesn’t have much of an incentive to quit his job, as he wasn’t responsible for what happened. Maybe some psychology person out there can argue some sort of convoluted guilt complex but I’m not buying it.
While I’m on that topic lets talk about Shaq. Due to his acting talent that shames everyone surrounding him, I cannot in any way buy that he is some sort of super genius. What little of the awful sudo-science is in the movie is fumbled clumsily by Shaq’s poor delivery and feels clunky. He really seems like nothing more than a big guy in a suite and the movie never gives us any reason to think of him as anything but that.
Iron’s is also one of the biggest Gary Stu’s that I have seen in a while. He is written as the perfect person. Smart, handsome, caring, courageous, and the list goes on forever. No flaws whatsoever. This just makes his character a big bore to me. A flawless character is a flat character and lacks any real depth. I don’t want to root for him, I want to punch him in the face…..but that would probably hurt my hand more than him.
The acting is actually just pretty bad all across the board. Iron’s paralyzed buddy Sparky is wheelchair bound yet there are some scenes where you can clearly see her legs movie. Lets not even get into the use of the child actors. Anakin from Phantom Menace gave them a run for their money in the talent department.
Back to the pitiful turd they call a plot, Burke gets pissed off and returns home in order to sell weapons to an arcade storeowner, whose goons consist mostly of adolescent boys. Kevin Flint this guy ain’t. Just like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there isn’t much threat to be found in little kids running around playing hardened criminals. Judd Nelson who plays main villain Burke comes off as the bastard child of John McClain and Charlie Sheen, two people who should never be in the same sentence together. Not a good combo. He is primarily a winy loser whose super genius is just as unconvincing as Shaq’s.
Using the tech that Iron’s created, Burke recruits for himself a crime squad capable of stealing millions. Iron is disgusted to learn of this and breaks his vow to stop making weapons in order to get his creations off the street and out of his neighborhood (coincidence galore!). To do this he first kidnappers his old crippled partner Sparky. No, not a clever sidekick dog as you might have thought from the name, but a paralyzed girl in a wheelchair. They then start constructing a suite to defeat their old weapons….sound familiar yet?
How do they create this mega super tech suite. Well first they go to a junkyard where another annoying character explains how ALL the parts they conveniently need fell out of truck. Maybe the writers called that a joke but I have another name for it. A copout. Yet despite all the fuss over this super steel suite, it really looks no more intimidating than the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. After all this, how does the army NOT know who he is? They must all be idiots, especially when he calls them on the phone and they should easily recognize his voice.
It is almost impossible to review this film without comparing it too Iron Man at least once, so I might as well get it over with. The concept is very similar but where it fell apart was in the scripting and characters. No time was really spent making the story or people in it believable. Bad actors, sh*tty set design, bad dialogue, and just horrible production value all across the board. Here is the biggest difference between the two of them and I can describe it in one word. Chemistry. Chemistry between actors, directors, and a well rounded script to help them. A lack of this is what killed Steel.
FINAL RATING: 1/10- (10%)
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