Hands of Steel

Hands of Steel is an Italian science fiction action film from 1986, directed by Sergio Martino, who co-wrote the screenplay with Elisa Briganti and John Crowther. In a near-future setting where environmental damage has become a major political issue, the cyborg Paco Queruak is dispatched to eliminate a prominent figure whose activism threatens powerful corporate interests. When the moment comes, something of his human past resurfaces and he refuses to carry out the killing, turning him into a fugitive pursued by the forces that created him. He takes shelter in a remote hotel run by a woman named Linda, but his pursuers close in, along with a local fighter who has his own reasons for wanting a piece of him.

Sergio Martino had already built a long career across popular Italian genres by the time he made this, his eleventh feature as director, following the 1985 comedy Half Right Half Left and preceding The Opponent in 1988. Daniel Greene plays Paco, with Janet Ågren as Linda, Claudio Cassinelli as Peter Howell, and George Eastman among the supporting cast. Luciano Martino produced.

The film runs 94 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.3 from around 3,200 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 5.2 from a much smaller base of 91 votes, indicating a modest but persistent cult following rather than broad acclaim.