Steel City (2005)
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 29
Fresh: 25 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7/10
Critic Reviews: 17
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 704
My Rating
Movie Info
A young man struggles to hold his family together while keeping his own life on track in this independent drama. P.J. Lee (Thomas Guiry) is a teenager growing up in a decaying industrial town in Illinois. Few kids have it easy where P.J.'s from, but he has it harder than most -- his parents split up several years ago, and P.J.'s father, Carl (John Heard), is in jail on vehicular manslaughter charges he's not likely to shake. P.J.'s big brother, Ben (Clayne Crawford), is married and has a life of
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Cast
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John Heard
Carl Lee -
Tom Guiry
PJ Lee -
Clayne Crawford
Ben Lee -
America Ferrera
Amy Barnes -
James McDaniel
Randall Karns -
Heather McComb
Lucy Jones -
Jamie Anne Brown
Maria Lee -
Laurie Metcalf
Marianne Karns -
Raymond J. Barry
Uncle Victor Lee -
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Steel City Trailer & Photos
All Critics (32) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (27) | Rotten (4) | DVD (3)
Steel City is gritty, blue-collar and surprisingly dry-eyed. If it hadn't been a movie, it could have been a song off Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album.
Top CriticMany traps await novice filmmakers, but writer-director Jun has bypassed most in his absorbing debut.
Steel City is a moving look at fathers and sons. [Director] Jun neither romanticizes nor pathologizes blue-collar family life. In this earnest rust belt indie, doing the right thing means tipping the scale of justice.
The phrase 'small, personal film' can sound like an alibi for a trivial and self-indulgent vanity project, but Brian Jun's well-crafted Steel City embodies the highest promise of the term.
Steel City is one of the most hopeful movies I've seen recently -- not just for its humane, realistic story line (about a small-town family in crisis), but in its very being.
Steel City may be the only movie released this year that's so observant you can hear what the characters aren't saying.
Deceptively deep once you look past its frank surface... stark and volatile...
Awfully low-key yet undeniably engaging...
Soulfully in tune with the bruised blue collar lives of a Southern Illinois town where fractured existence and dead end futures conspire against the humanity of its characters.
Writer-director Brian Jun makes it clear that Steel City isn't about big events, even crucial inciting ones. It's about day-to-day decisions and how they change and inform relationships.
Nearly everything about Steel City is pure Indie Filmmaking 101.
For big chunks in the middle of the movie, Steel City seems lost and styleless, but it builds a cumulative power as we get closer to learning what's up.
While the territory of Steel City is as well-worn as the roads of this tiny town, the people and performances are interesting enough to warrant the detour.
Brian Jun makes a strong feature debut with a blue-collar drama rooted in character and community and focused on the everyday over the dramatic flare-ups...
Audience Reviews for Steel City
Super Reviewer
A little slice of midwest life that's far deepeer than it appears on the surface, akin to an indie version of Mystic River as it plays off the relationships between fathers and sons, and brother and brother.
The women are almost an afterthought, and yet here again we see that America Ferrera (Real Women Have Curves, Ugly Betty) is indeed a gifted actress and, when not wearing those hideous braces, fake eyebrows and mismatched clothes that are required on TV, quite beautiful.
The acting overall is quite good, and yet there are times when it seems that the actors are hemmed in by the dialogue, even though the dialogue is direct and real (especially in the case of Uncle Vic).
When the fim comes full circle, and you can see the sins of the father weighing on the sons, and yet the bond between brothers, even though they disagree with one another, it's a powerful statement of humankinds' yearning to belong to something, lest we become leaves in the wind, living without purpose or hope.
Super Reviewer
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DIRECTED BY: Brian Jun
SUMMARY: When PJ Lee's (Tom Guiry) father is arrested for vehicular manslaughter, it's just the icing on the cake for a teen whose life is already difficult, thanks to a broken home and dysfunctional relationships. In short order, PJ gets fired, has a falling out with his girlfriend and is kicked out of the family home.
MY THOUGHTS: "This movie had some good acting in it, but the story was a bit slow. The issues they all are dealing with is sad, and the acting is there, it's just the story takes awhile to get going. When it starts theres cops, ambulances, and a crash scene. But it never gives all the details of what happend. But I guess it may not have needed to. If you just sit back and let the movie be and not think about the story and where its going, its watchable. But in the end the acting is the only thing good that came out of this. But I still liked it. Still worth seeing."