“The people’s champion… sounds good to me.”
The H-Bomb: No, your eyes are not deceiving you. No, that four star rating is not a typo. No, H-Man is not off his meds. I know what you’re thinking, that the story of “Real Steel” sounds an awful lot like “Rocky” remade by Michael Bay (ewwww… shudder), and that the only result that could ever come of that is pure, unadulterated cinematic retardation. Believe me, I was thinking that very same thing beforehand, and normally I would’ve been one hundred percent right. But on this occasion, I was one hundred percent wrong.
Set sometime in the not-too-distant future, “Real Steel” (adapted from a Richard Matheson story) tells the tale of ex-boxer Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), who was forced into retirement when human boxing fell out of popularity long ago, and now gets by going around boxing robots. Basically, the way this works is he controls his robot like a video game while taking on another robot being controlled by someone else. Like in real boxing, there are sanctioned league fights, underground fights, and championships. But, no matter who’s running the fight, they usually end with one robot or the other being destroyed. Whether all this could be construed as a step forward or backwards in human evolution depends on who you ask.
But anyway, after Charlie’s last couple of robots have been smashed into junk, he finds himself down and out, in need of cash and a new bot. This is where fate smiles on Charlie, as ex-girlfriend, with whom he had an eleven year old son, Max (Dakota Goyo), has just died. Max’s wealthy aunt (Hope Davis), wants to adopt him, which Charlie has no problem with, since he was never part of the kid’s life, anyway. However, she’ll be in Italy for the summer, and so her husband offers Charlie $100,000 to look after Max until the end of August.
At first Charlie and Max butt heads and want nothing to do with each other, but then one night while they’re in a junk yard looking for robot parts, Max finds an old, long discarded robot named “Atom.” Atom, as Charlie explains, is a sparring robot, not designed for actual competition. But Max, being the headstrong youth that he is, disagrees, and sets about training (programming) the dinged up old bot to fight.
And what do you know, Charlie and Max actually start winning fights, with the puny old robot that wasn’t even designed to fight competitively. Word about them starts to spread, all the way to Farra Lemkova (Olga Fonda), a Russian Kim Kardashian who owns the world champion robot fighter, “Zeus,” designed by some scary looking ninja assassin dude (Karl Yune). Lemkova arrogantly offers to buy Atom off Charlie and Max, but Max throws it back in her face by challenging the mighty Zeus to a fight.
Naturally, this is just a joke to Camp Zeus, but after the public’s reaction to the challenge, they’re left with no choice but to accept. Will Charlie and Max be able to get their little-robot-that-could ready to take down the big, bad champion, and, of course more importantly, will they stop kicking each other in the balls and actually bond as father and son over the course of this long journey? What do you think?
“Real Steel” is a much, much better film than it should be. I went into this thing thinking it was going to be stupid as hell, like “BattleBots: The Movie”, and came out of it completely dumbfounded by how caught up I was in it. Strip away the high tech robots and whatnot, and what we have here is basically a good old fashioned, feel good, underdog sports movie. It’s a familiar formula, but it’s one that worked in the past, and I’ll be damned, it worked here, too.
Even though this flick is filled to the brim with slick special effects and metal mashing, robotic beat downs, that’s not what makes it so good. Rather, and hold on to your seat, because this is a shocker, it’s the well developed, likable lead characters and their chemistry together that maketh the movie. Jackman and Goyo are right on, spot on, dead perfect as the mismatched father and son team, and their performances couldn’t be better.
Goyo, as the piss ‘n vinegar filled Max, is a real find, and you won’t be able to help but smile during the scenes when he and his robot dance into the ring. Jackman’s Charlie is a real douche-baggy prick at first, but he redeems himself as his relationship with Max grows. It’s ultimately their journey and their bonding that makes up the back bone of this film, and that makes it so emotionally satisfying. The terrific sense of humor that it retains throughout helps, as well. Charlie’s big toothed redneck tormentor, Ricky (Kevin Durand), provided some real laugh out loud moments.
“Real Steel”, despite its moronic sounding premise, is in actuality a genuine, straightforward crowd pleaser. Yeah, you’re not going to be very surprised by it, but when a formula is done this well, it don’t matter. You’ll be reeled in by it in spite of yourself. I feel guilty saying this, but it’s actually one of the better movies to come out this year, and definitely one to catch on the big screen.
