Metacritic reviews

There's a funny, entertaining, good vs. evil movie built around O'Neal--lots of plot and strong support from "Suddenly Susan" boss Judd Nelson, Richard Roundtree, Annabeth Gish and the city of Los Angeles, home of Shaq's day job with the Lakers. [18 Aug 1997, p.F4]

The concept may not be bad, but there are times when the execution borders on embarrassing.

Well-intentioned but hulky and lumbering, "Steel" falls somewhere between the cacophony of "Batman & Robin" and the tepid Robert Townsend vehicle "Meteor Man." With a size-22 shoe, it just keeps stepping on its own feet.

Writer-director Kenneth Johnson provides a tinny story and a leaden pace for his tarnished titan. There’s a coziness and simplicity to the production that would be better served on TV. Cinema-size, it comes off as corny, antiquated and slightly cheesy.

A tepid vat of cinematic sludge...O'Neal will doubtless survive this latest misadventure, as he did last year's outing as a genie in "Kazaam," but only the most devoted of his admirers will want to watch him lumber through "Steel."

"Steel" plays like a Saturday morning cartoon -- overdone stunts and hokey chase sequences with the hero on a motorcycle, dodging heavily armed gangsters as well as cops who think he's a bad guy.

Steel's target audience of 12-year-old boys would be better off staying home and busying themselves at traditional, character-enriching activities: sniping at family pets with BB guns, playing Nintendo, and masturbating.

You know you are in trouble when the back cover of the DVD boasts that "There'll be a lot of thrillin' before Steel himself can start chillin'."

The film is slow-moving, overlong and never more ambitious than a TV feature, though younger kids will probably respond to O'Neal's amiability. [16 Aug 1997, p.24]

"Steel" isn't offensively exploitative, just awkward, goofy and terminally sluggish. But then, how fast-paced could a movie be whose central character clumps around in 75 pounds of body armor? [15 Aug 1997]