Steel Dawn (1987)

 

Nomad, a swordsman, wanders through the desert in a post-World War III world. He searches for his mentor's killer, the assassin Sho.

Nomad's travels bring him to the settlement of Meridian, where he finds work on a farm owned by the widow Kasha (who is, of course, young and attractive), and becomes friends Kasha's son, Jux.

Meridian, however, is not without its troubles.  A local landowner named Damnil has employed a gang of thugs to harass the town and gain a monopoly on the local water supply.  Kasha and Jux are among his targets.

When Nomad proves more than Damnil's thugs can handle, the land owner hires a deadly assassin - Sho, naturally - to get rid of the interloper.  The stage is set for a showdown.

Steel Dawn owes a considerable debt to the western Shane; in that film, a drifter comes to town, befriends a young boy, and helps small land owners stand up to a corrupt cattle baron.  It is of several films that star Patrick Swayze made with his real life wife Lisa Niemi; she plays Kasha, of course, a role that features some hysterically 80s hair.

Released in the same year as Dirty Dancing, this low budget post apocalyptic adventure attempted to try and cash in on the (unexpected) success of that film and Swayze's resulting surge to stardom.  The effort was unsuccessful.  There are good reasons for that, I think.  Much of the fight choreography is mediocre, and the script - in addition to being heavily derivative of another, better film, is pretty weak.  It has a tendency to try and skate by doing just the absolute minimum.

As an example of this, there's a brief scene early on where Nomad meets a dog.  The encounter is not hostile, and the dog then disappears from the screen for almost an hour, before abruptly turning up once more to rescue Nomad from imprisonment.  That kind of Doggie Ex Machina needs more effort to set up.  At least show the dog hanging around the farm and Nomad throwing it some of his food, or saving it from mistreatment.

The best part of the film?  Probably Brion James.  Best known for playing big dumb bad guys, he here gets to play the role of Nomad's big dumb sidekick, and is really rather fun.

Overall, this is only for fans of 80s post-apocalyptica.