Hands of Steel (1986)

Very well executed

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Hands of Steel (1986) ** (out of 4)Paco (Daniel Greene) is a cyborg who is sent on a mission to kill a scientist who might know too much about the future. He fails in his mission and heads out of town to hide when he meets a diner owner (Janet Agren) who lets him stay with her. Before long the men who sent the cyborg on his mission want him dead and are coming after him.This here is a rather interesting film from director Sergio Martino. It's obviously a rip-off of THE TERMINATOR done on a very low-budget and it does show that Italian cinema was losing its grip a bit. At the same time, the movie also might have influenced another American movie that would be released the next year but more on that in a bit. If you're a fan of Italian no-budget pictures then there's enough here that should keep you entertained, although there's no doubt that it should have been much better.The most interesting thing in this movie is a subplot that happens at the diner. A trucker (George Eastman) shows up and he's the champion arm wrestler and this actually ends up taking a large portion of the running time. Of course, the trucker-arm wrestling thing would be the story of OVER THE TOP, which would be released the following year and it should be noted that Greene and Stallone were friends so did he know about this picture? Did Greene tip him off about the story here? It's rather interesting to see the connections between this film and what would turn up in America the following year.With that said, HANDS OF STEEL has a lot of problems with it including the first thirty-minutes, which are downright boring. The story never makes too much sense but I guess that's to be expected. Another problem is that the action doesn't really start until the final thirty-minutes so there's a lot of dead time early on. Again, the saving grace is the craziness of the arm wrestling scenes and there's no doubt that Eastman is a lot of fun in his role. Both Greene and Agren are good for what they're asked to do and we also get John Saxon in a small bit.HANDS OF STEEL is a really silly movie that doesn't have too much going for it but if you're a fan of these low-budget Italian movies then it's worth watching.

Look, it's not high art, it's a silly B movie about a cyborg punching the bad guys. The effects are pretty bad, the acting is worse, and the so-called future is pretty much just the 80's with a couple of shiny tubes sticking out of things. But it has a goofy charm and any time a dude tears another dude's heart out with his bare hands you've got a good time. And don't forget John Saxon!

It's impossible to hate this low-budget Italian rip-off of "The Terminator." Between the non-stop action scenes and the testosterone that permeates every frame, HANDS OF STEEL is a decidedly watchable hunk of mid '80s Eurotrash.In a near-future when pollution has created severe health and weather issues for the American people, a cyborg assassin named Paco Queruak (rhymes with "Kerouac," oddly enough) is dispatched to kill the country's leading environmental activist. However, Paco's human side prevents him from taking the blind, wheelchair-bound old man's life. Instead, he softens the killing blow so that it merely wounds the environmentalist. Paco then goes on the run, both from the FBI and from the evil industrialist Turner (John Saxon), who hired him for the hit.He hides out in a small, isolated town in his native Arizona. There, Paco befriends Linda (Janet Agren), a rugged blonde who owns a combination motel and eatery. Paco earns first the fear and disgust, but later the respect, of a local gang of arm-wrestling truck drivers, who he quite literally beats at their own game. When the bad guys begin to zero in on Paco, getting Linda seriously wounded, one of the truck-driving arm-wrestlers sacrifices his life to save hers.After much fighting and killing, it's down to Paco and Turner, who is armed with a laser that Paco slaps away from him. Paco says, "Turner, you got it wrong about controlling my mind. You only own a man when you control his heart." To drive his point home, Paco reaches into Turner's chest with his cybernetic arm and pulls out the man's heart. Now it's just Paco and Linda, who has grown to care about him. But Paco is torn between his human and robotic sides. To its credit, the film ends right there, on a refreshing note of ambiguity.OK, so Paco's car is red in its first scene but magically turns white for the rest of the film. OK, so the characters barely qualify as one-dimensional. OK, so the female cyborg sent after Paco makes fight sounds you'd have to hear to believe. OK, so the entire film has the look of an Italian backlot trying to pass itself off first as New York City, then as rural Arizona. But still and all, for what they were doing, the damned thing works! It held my interest for its full 95-minute running time. What can I say? HANDS OF STEEL is the best arm-wrestling-cyborg-assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold film ever produced.

'Hands of Steel' AKA 'Atomic Cyborg' (1986) This is a horrible film - not good at all. What kills me is John Saxon is in it - and I like him. He shouldn't be in a film like this but he is. Really the movie is just "ok" - barely watchable but it's better than other things I've seen on TV most of the time.A cyborg named Paco Queruak is assigned to kill a scientist that holds the fate of mankind in his hands... he fails, hides in a diner where he meets a woman who falls in love with him. Together they must defeat the other cyborgs that are after them and find the scientist to save mankind.I got this one in a 50-pack horror films. This does not belong in a horror pack... maybe in a pack of action or sci-fi films.2/10