jaytamplinwilson-95403 Fists of Steel / Atomic Cyborg is one of the 1980s lost actions gems. Made to cash in on the success of The Terminator and numerous other successful 80s action and sci-fi movies, FoS actually turns out to be a rad little piece of exploration cinema. Good fun

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.

kai ringler Wow what a movie,, at first I thought it was like a prequel of sorts to the Road Warrior or something like that,, so many similarities I thought that it was uncanny, like for instance the boneyard of junk cars and such, and the baron wasteland. No major actors or actresses in here that I noticed but that didn't matter because the plot and the action carried the movie 100 percent of the time, I was not disappointed in anything at all really,, all of the fight sequences were choreographed brilliantly, and the female lead was nice to look at. a man/cyborg 70/30 mix , is on the run after being programmed to kill a top scientist, great action, arm wrestling, chases and the like , great movie I was totally surprised at how great this movie was and will watch again very soon.

Paul Andrews Hands of Steel is set in the near future where air pollution has become a major factor, hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of simply breathing in polluted air & powerful environmental activist Rev. Arthur Mosely (Franco Fantasia) is planning on doing something about it & exposing the organisations & people behind it. Powerful businessman Francis Turner (John Saxon) is worried by Mosely so he has devised a plan to send an almost indestructible cyborg named Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene) to assassinate him, Paco enters Mosely's room & is about to kill him when some vague memories when he was still a man enter his head & make him abandon his mission. Escaping into the desert Paco makes his way to Arizona where he meets Linda (Janet Agren) & becomes involved in arm wrestling before Turner & his other hired assassins track him down with order's to kill him no matter what...This Italian production was co-written & directed by Sergio Martino (changed to his usual Martin Dolman for English speaking territories) & is known internationally under a few different titles including Hands of Steel in the US, Fists of Steel here in the UK & Atomic Cyborg which was the title on the version I saw, taking itself extremely seriously this has no less than seven (!) screenwriters credited to it which I find amazing. Set in the not too distant future you sense that this was an Italian attempt at a rip-off of The Terminator (1984) with the cyborg character sent to kill someone important & even contains an almost exact replica of the sequence when Arnie repairs his damaged arm. There's not much here to suggest that Hands of Steel is set in the future, sure there's a brief sequence where Paco drives through some acid rain which is quite literally acid as it burns & melts his car but otherwise the action & setting is pretty much contemporary apart from a few cyborg references. There are a couple of subplots that never really go anywhere, the arm wrestling scenes, the hunt for Paco by the FBI who find him at the end but the film finishes before any sort of final confrontation & Turner's obsession with killing Paco to keep him quiet which should have been the main focus of the story but we never learn how far deep Turner is in or why he wanted Mosely dead so badly or why he had to create a cyborg from a complete stranger & hope it worked rather send his own people in to kill Mosely. None of it makes much sense although it moves along at a fair pace, it has a few decent action scenes & some unintentionally hilarious dialogue, just listen to Pace & Raul trade insults as it pure comedy gold with exchanges like 'anyone know this piece of Rat turd?' & 'he's as strong as a wet fart' particular highlights. At just under 90 minutes there's some fun to be had with Hands of Steel with it's funny dialogue, silly action, subplot about arm wrestling & daft story of a big tough cyborg regaining his humanity & falling in love but it's far from a classic.Shot mainly in the Arizona desert the future world that hands of Steel portrays isn't that far removed from the world now, I mean polluted air & corrupt organisations sound very familiar. There's not much blood or gore here, a cyborg is decapitated, a few people are shot, Paco rips someone's heart out & a Snake is karate chopped in half by Paco which probably accounts for the cuts to the original UK VHS release back in the 80's. There are some OK fight sequences & a bit of a car chase at the end as Paco & Linda try to escape & are pursued by hired assassins in a helicopter. It's during the filming of these scenes that tragedy struck on set as a helicopter crashed into a bridge & killed both the pilot & star Claudio Cassinelli.Probably shot on a low budget the production values are alright as far as they go, being filmed in real locations help the look of Hands of Steel but it just doesn't look futuristic enough & when it does try to be futuristic it ends up looking silly like putting thick piping over cars for no apparent reason. Daniel Greene is awful as the cybernetic hero, Janet Agren & George Eastman, John Saxon & the late Claudio Cassinelli provide better support & are far more watchable.Hands of Steel, Fists of Steel or Atomic Cyborg whichever title you see this under it's a decent enough post apocalyptic sci-fi action thriller that I imagine was made as a rip-off of The Terminator with added arm wrestling. Good for a few laughs & undemanding if silly entertainment.