Real Steel is just about what you expect it to be, plus a few surprises.
There are fighting robots, and for anyone that feels some nostalgia for Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, the boxing battle scenes and top notch CGI will definitely spark some excitement.
The plot was a formulaic father-son tale of boxing glory, only set some twenty years into the future, with machines in the ring. A hunky, embittered Hugh Jackman plays Charlie, a former boxer who racks up debts in drunken binges, bad bets and a losing streak with his robots. Charlie is a hardened jerk, willing to sell custody of his estranged eleven-year-old son for some quick robot cash.
Stuck with Max for the summer, Charlie realizes that Max is a smart kid who refuses to be sidelined. The two team up after Max finds an old sparring robot, Atom, in a junkyard. Despite Charlie’s horrific treatment of his son, they manage to bond over their mutual love for the sport and their desire for Atom to challenge even the mightiest of all robots, the Japanese-designed gargantuan, Zeus.
Dakota Goyo’s performance is worth the watch – he handles his role with fervor and strength, and it’s hard not to root for a cute, starry-eyed kid with so much passion and spunk. Jackman and his girlfriend Bailey (Evangeline Lilly), however, struggle through extremely flat dialogue, dragging down the audience with some badly delivered exposition about Jackman’s old glory days as a boxer, while Lilly cannot help but swoon over his scowls and gleaming muscles.
The “real” entertainment comes from the tense robot brawls. The premise is decidedly enticing, and there was clearly a lot of foresight that went into the mechanics of each fight – the robots look fantastic and each battle is timed just right, so the audience never knows what the outcome will be.
Unfortunately, the sci-fi aspect of the film is too ambiguous altogether. We only get a small glimpse of a potentially interesting view into a dystopian American future where video games have essentially come to life in a gladiatorial franchise.
Charlie and Max’s relationship is actually refreshing, at times even delightfully comical. Expectedly, Max comes to show Charlie the deeper facets of his life in order to re-awaken him into doing something valuable. The best scenes in Real Steel are those that involve Max and Charlie verbally sparring with one another, since each is equally as stubborn as the other. We see Max downing energy drinks to work on Atom well into the night, which is terrifying, since a can of soda can make an 11-year-old bounce off the walls. But Max and his bot Atom are endearing underdogs, unrelenting and jazzy. They even dance with each other before each fight, a clever gimmick.
Real Steel is shallow, a collage of many movies we have all seen before, but it holds its own. The action is top notch, and the characters experience some heartfelt changes. At times, it is compelling, but don’t expect to leave the theater weeping or anything.
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