Good start, but then it gets ruined

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.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

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.

If you were to have watched this film when it was released, you'd have probably thought it was OK, or been a little disappointed. But watch it now, in 2017, and it takes on a whole different identity.Hands of Steel is just a pure cheese fest of 80's stereotypes. The fight scenes are badly choreographed, the shoot outs have over the top sound effects dubbed on, magazine clips that never run out, and helicopters that seem to be able to withstand hundreds of bullets with no effect. The bad guys are even worse shots than in Commando!The music and sound effects are typically and wonderfully 80's, and the script has to contain some of the corniest lines ever. And when they unleash the 'futuristic' laser weapon.. well, that was the final touch of perfection for me!If you loved the 1980's and the action films it produced, then you will absolutely love Hands of Steel. I have never smiled and laughed so much watching a film in a long time. It's fantastic!Watch it with a few friends and some beers, and you're guaranteed a fantastic evening.

Daniel Greene, the "actor" from the Chuck Norris school of acting, takes on the biggest acting challenge since Schwartznegger in "Conan the Barbarian". He is a "cyborg" (part man/part robot) involved in the plot of assassinating a scientist who ends up in hiding. One of the more entertaining segments has Greene taking on an arm wrestling champion and being told that after he's done, he'll need to "wipe himself" with his nose. That poetic line is one of the more clever lines among the script's absurdities, and the plot goes into so many ridiculous directions that it's tempting to pull out a compass to see where you are. Then, it stops altogether, becoming crass and violent with no purpose. Greene seems to be giving a deliberately wooden performance, showing no depth and passion, a far cry from his likable heroic roles on "Falcon Crest" and opposite Elvira in "Mistress of the Dark". John Saxon adds some class, but the other actors just come off instantly forgettable. This ain't no " Terminator" or even a "Robo Cop", an obvious rip-off of science fiction TV shows and movies without really much thought put into it.

A cyborg is sent to kill a scientist. If that sounds like "The Terminator", don't be surprised. This film was even marketed in some countries (notably Malaysia) as "Return of the Terminator", so the people behind this one knew full well what they were doing.Sergio Martino is the mastermind director here. Some have called this film better than "Fall of New York" while others have called it worse. I never saw "Fall of New York" but I truly hope it can't be worse than this one. Sure, e have John Saxon and George Eastman... but we don't really have the ability to see them.That's right; the picture quality (not to even mention the audio) is so bad, so fuzzy, that it's dang near impossible to tell what's going on much of the time. My cell phone takes video more clear than this. I've commented in the past about Italian budgets being low, but this one takes the taco.I see no reason to watch this film. I received it as part of a "tales of terror" movie collection (even though it has little or no horror elements), and would not have stumbled upon it otherwise. I suggest you also avoid it, though if they found some magical way to clean up the picture, my opinion might change.