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.
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.