Hands Of Steel

Year releasted: 1986

by Keith Phipps
July 9th, 2003

Just how bad is the post-apocalyptic future of Hands Of Steel? So bad that a candidate can run for office under the slogan "You have no future" and look progressive. That's the none-too-inspiring motto of the wheelchair-bound idealist Daniel Greene attempts to kill at the beginning of the film. Having no memory of wanting to kill a presidential candidate, Greene is understandably shaken when he wakes up from his murderous fugue and leaves a devastated New York City for Arizona. And what do post-apocalyptic Arizonans do for fun? Tough-but-tender barmaid Janet Agren is quick to inform him: "Did you ever arm-wrestle? It's a big deal around here." After defeating one local tough guy, Greene finds out just how big a deal it is when he's taken out to the desert, suspended in mid-air, and left to die in the baking heat. Meanwhile, back in New York, John Saxon desperately wants to retrieve Greene–and not just because he has a soft spot in his heart for Lorenzo Lamas look-alikes, as becomes apparent when Greene returns from his desert beating unharmed and challenges the local arm-wrestling champ to a deadly game in which the loser's hand is pushed into the mouth of a poisonous snake. Greene wins, assuring that he won't be annoyed during his smooth-talking attempt to romance Agren. "Seventy percent of my body has been bionically reconstructed," he tells her. "I guess you're wondering if I'm a man. Well, I've been asking myself that lately." But his pondering days are numbered: He's being pursued by a pair of assassins, one of them a fellow cyborg. Slipping out of their trap, he's forced to confront Saxon, who attacks him with a laser cannon, then tries to bring him back into the fold. "I don't want to destroy you... I could never make another one like you," Saxon pleads. But Greene sees through his tricks and offers a few words of wisdom of his own, just before crushing Saxon's throat. "You made one mistake... You thought you could own me by controlling my brain, but what you didn't realize was that you don't own a man until you control his heart." Then, in a weird twist, Greene finds Agren in time to reveal that hands aren't the only part of him made of steel; his head is, too. "It was a day in our near future the era of the cyborg had begun," announces the closing scrawl, without commenting on the permanent changes that era would wreak in the world of desert arm-wrestling.