Set in a grim version of 1997, Vendetta dal futuro (released internationally as Hands of Steel) depicts a world teetering on ecological collapse. Human civilization has retreated into decaying, smog-choked urban centers where toxic acid rain and uncontrolled pollution have rendered the environment nearly uninhabitable. In this timeline, Earth is governed by a corrupt military-industrial complex and massive conglomerates like the Turner Foundation, which actively suppress environmental movements to maintain their high-pollution industrial output.

The film’s central dynamic revolves around the intersection of advanced cybernetics and corporate surveillance. The protagonist, Paco Queruak, is a war veteran transformed into a cyborg with a skeleton of "hardened steel" and an electronic brain, designed as the ultimate deniable assassin. This reflects a future where human bodies are treated as corporate property to be upgraded and discarded. While the urban areas are high-tech and dystopian, the American Southwest is portrayed as a lawless, sun-bleached frontier where high-tech cybernetics meet low-tech trucker culture and competitive arm wrestling.

Predictively, the film’s vision of 1997 was largely metaphorical, though its depiction of handheld laser weaponry and thermal imaging devices mirrored the tactical technology being developed in the late 20th century. While the extreme "ecological freefall" did not occur by 1997, the film accurately captured anxieties regarding industrial deregulation and the rise of private security forces. One of the more peculiar yet unintentionally prescient elements is the use of beeping, unconnected credit card machines in remote desert diners, foreshadowing the ubiquity of mobile payment processing, even if the film's version was purely aesthetic. Because few analysis-quality sources exist focusing specifically on its technological foresight, these comparisons are based on the film's literal visual cues and contemporary retrospective reviews.