StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Sam Panico Francis Turner (John Saxon, who I will opine is my favorite American actor in a foreign genre film ever) has created a cyborg who is 70% robot and 30% human, Paco Queruak. He programs him to kill a scientist with plans to cure acid rain (that was a big problem back in the 80's that, much like killer bees, has just gone away). However, his solution runs afoul of the military/industrial complex that Turner works for. So he must die. And guess who programs him? Donald O'Brien, Doctor Butcher, M.D. himself!However, Paco still has humanity inside and abandons his mission and sets out to discover more of his past in Arizona. There, he finds love with Linda (Janet Agren, City of the Living Dead, Eaten Alive!) in literally ten or twenty seconds of screen time. And he gets into a feud with Paul Morales (George Eastman!), a redneck trucker who don't take too kindly to strangers around these parts.Paul is an arm wrestler, too. It's no coincidence that Hands of Steel was going to come out at the same time as Over the Top (which according to this article, was filming just 50 miles away).Then it's back to the military/industrial complex, who sends a whole bunch of killers after our hero. There are bikers, mafia guys and even a ripoff of Pris from Blade Runner that Paco beats by ripping off her head. Then Paul comes back to try and kill Paco, but our hero literally crushes his head with his cyborg grip.Paco takes down a helicopter and stops Saxon, who has a giant gun, before cops surround the building ala the Rambo: First Blood. Thinking Linda is dead, Paco has gone crazy, but she survives and is able to talk him into surrendering.Directed by Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, 2019: After the Fall of New York), this movie sadly shows little of the mastery of the form he showed in his giallo work.Even worse, there's a tragedy that happened during the filming, as Claudio Cassinelli (Warriors of the Year 2072, Murder Rock) was killed when the helicopter he was in crashed. The rotor blades struck the underside of the bridge and broke off, sending the helicopter into a canyon, where Cassinelli and the pilot died. It wasn't Martino's fault, as the National Transportation Safety Board reported that there were prescription drugs in the pilot's hotel room that would have impaired his judgment. Because John Saxon was a stickler for Screen Actors Guild rules, he shot all of his scenes in Italy and refused to appear in any of the non-union American shot footage. He believes that the SAG saved his life, as otherwise, he would have been on that helicopter.At least there's a score by Claudio Simonetti of Goblin to liven things up.Hands of Stone is a kind of movie we don't get much of any longer - a movie that found life on the video shelves, a cyborg movie we could rent when Terminator was out of stock. If there's one compliment I can give this film, the art that sells it is awesome.

soulexpress 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.

brando647 Oh, man. If you haven't seen HANDS OF STEEL, you are doing yourself a great disservice. This movie is amazing. You'll laugh. You'll scratch your head in confusion. You'll laugh some more. It's a science fiction/action film from director Sergio Martino, released in 1986. I'm assuming it was straight-to-video but I would totally pay to watch it on a big screen with an audience. This movie starts off nuts and only gets crazier from there. Our hero in this near future is Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene), a cybernetic assassin with a heart of gold. We meet him at the start of the film as he's about to complete an assignment; he's been ordered to murder an old, blind politician/environmentalist. Paco appears to complete his mission and goes on the run. Why go rogue? Because he had a change of heart and left the old man alive, and now Paco is the target of both the authorities and the organization who hired him. He leaves town, braving the acid rain (because it's the future and the environment, while appearing absolutely normal at a glance, has fallen on hard times) to hide out in the Arizona desert. He finds shelter with innkeeper Linda (Janet Agren) at her little highway outpost, a quiet place with the exception of the constant prostitute traffic and nightly truck driver arm-wrestling competitions. Paco seems hopeful to start a new, nonviolent life in the desert, but if the organization he betrayed doesn't get to him his new arm-wrestling nemesis Raul Morales (George Eastman) will.HANDS OF STEEL has everything you could want: cyborgs, future stuff, strippers, violence, unintentional comedy, and loads of arm wrestling. Still not convinced you need to watch it? How about this: at one point, Paco karate chops the head off a snake. If you're not the least bit curious yet, you've got less humanity than Paco's forearms. Paco Queruak is an unsung hero of the action-packed '80s. HANDS OF STEEL is a faded jewel buried beneath a decade of low-budget genre films just waiting to be discovered. What are Paco's intentions? Who is this mysterious (and obviously well-funded) organization behind his enhancements and what did they have against the old, blind environmentalist? Why does Raul insist on tormenting a man who has proved he could twist him into a man-pretzel without breaking a sweat? Does anyone else think that one guy chasing Paco throughout the movie with the sunglasses looked like the butler from "The Nanny" with a beard? To the point of distraction? Prepare for none of these questions to be answered. They keep the premise simple. Paco was supposed to kill a man. He didn't. He's gone off the grid and the organization needs to kill him before the government gets ahold of him and realizes they've created a cybernetic assassin. Then Linda enters the picture and shows Paco friendship or love or something and gives him a reason to fight. Also arm wrestling. This movie has an obsession with arm wrestling.You see, Linda's inn has competitions between the local truck drivers every night where they compete for who has the strongest forearms. The reigning champion is a beast named Anatolo Blanco but that doesn't stop Raul from running his mouth because he's second-best. He's loud, obnoxious, and a little too handsy with Linda for Paco's tastes. So there's some animosity between the two men right away and Raul, lacking the sense of self-preservation shared by everyone else in the bar, makes it his life mission to harass Paco. There is a fantastic sequence in the second half of the film where Raul organizes a trap that involves a bunch of locals, a car, a tape recorder, and feigned child endangerment to lure Paco out into the open. Dude, Raul is a drunken halfwit. Where did he find the competence to put this scheme together? Neither HANDS OF STEEL nor I know or care. You question every miraculous judgment call that leads to plot advancement and you'll miss out on all the fun. And a lot of the fun is in the details. I love how this movie is set in a near distant future where it's advanced nature manifests as a (single) futuristic car, a laser cannon, and a pair of cyborgs while literally everything else is so very '80s. I love how the baddies have shotguns that double as rocket launchers; seriously, you just shove the mini- rocket into the end of the barrel and pull the trigger (future magic!). I loved the fight between Paco and Suzie, the even cooler cyborg assassin disguised as a prostitute. I love Daniel Greene's wooden performance as Paco set against George Eastman's manic Raul.But what I love most of all is that HANDS OF STEEL, like many Z-grade action films I've watched, set itself up for a sequel. At the very end right before the end credits roll, we get a final title card that warns us the movie served as the start of the cyborg era. That's right, Paco was only the first. And we'll never know how it went down from there. But at least we have HANDS OF STEEL, the tale of Paco Queruak and his battle against that jerk at the truck stop in which he karate chops the head off a snake.

Rainey Dawn '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