Film

Steele Justice

Name: Steele Justice
Genre: Action
Released: 1987
Cast: Martin Kove, Sela Ward, Ronny Cox, Bernie Casey, Joseph Campanella

A lean 80s action film about an ex-cop Vietnam vet hunting down a corrupt general turned drug kingpin in Los Angeles. Steele Justice is pure revenge mechanics: efficient plotting, hand-to-hand combat, and that particular '87 aesthetic where grit meant something. It's for anyone who misses the era when action films trusted their premise to carry them.

TMDb rating

2.4

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Steele Justice

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To Live and Die in L.A.1985

Both pit obsessed lawmen against criminal enterprises in LA, but where Steele Justice plays it straight, Friedkin explores how the chase itself corrupts the chaser.

William Friedkin's kinetic thriller about federal agents tracking counterfeiters through Los Angeles. Both Steele Justice and this are stories of pursuit through LA's underbelly, but Friedkin's film is a masterclass in propulsive editing, ambiguous morality, and style as substance. It turns cop-versus-criminal into a dance neither partner can stop.

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Invasion U.S.A.1985

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Hard Target1993

John Woo's American debut: Jean-Claude Van Damme hunted for sport in New Orleans. Stylish gunplay, kinetic editing, and the visual intelligence that separates this from standard action fare. Woo brought something new.

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Death Wish1974

Steele Justice is the sanitized, wish-fulfillment version of this—a Vietnam vet with a clean cause instead of a man spiraling into paranoia. Both ask what revenge costs, but only one pretends the answer is satisfying.

Michael Winner's moral provocation: Charles Bronson as an architect who becomes a vigilante after his wife's murder. It's the DNA of every 80s revenge action film, made a decade earlier and far more genuinely disturbing. Death Wish earned its controversy by asking uncomfortable questions it didn't want to answer.

But It's genuinely bleak, the violence is not cartoonish, and it treats vigilantism as a sickness rather than a solution. 1974 audiences walked out angry.