Movie Review: REAL STEEL
Leading up to the release of Hugh Jackman's Real Steel, I've been saying all along that I'm not the biggest fan of director Shawn Levy. I haven't liked any of his films, and I wasn't expecting much for his latest film. Real Steel looked like it could be a fun entertaining film, but with Levy behind the camera I just didn't think I would be impressed, I thought it would fall short of any kind of awesomeness because Levy hasn't ever made an awesome movie. That being said, the film ended up being a lot better than I expected, and I had a great time watching it.
The story is set in the near-future where the sport of boxing has gone high-tech, the boxing replaced humans with big bad 8 foot tall, 2000 pound awesome robots. Jackman plays a washed-up fighter with absolutely no common sense or likability. He's just a small-time boxing promoter, trying to make a living and paying off some deep debts he has with the wrong people. He eventually hits rock bottom due to his stupidity, and he ends up spending time with his estranged son Max who will help ignite some hope into his dads life by finding and training a championship robot contender named Atom.
Not everyone is going to like this movie, this was made for the general moving going audience and there's not a lot of thinking energy that you have to put in the film. In fact the 1960's Twilight Zone episode Steel from which this film is based was much more sophisticated and thought provoking. The script for this movie was pretty weak. There's stuff in the film that really doesn't make any sense and there are odd hypocritical contradicting moments scattered through the entire film. The relationship between Jackman's character and the kid is kind of a mess. Jackman is a solid asshole to this kid at first, he was so much of a jerk in fact that it was completely unbelievable. Regardless of Jackman's hardness and stupidity in the beginning, the film ended up being a nice feel good sci-fi film heart and soul. The movie was by far not perfect, but I enjoyed the simple mindedness of it. There was just enough fun moments and awesome robot boxing matches to make the movie entertaining enough to help you look over it's faults, and enjoy the film for what it is.
Jackman did a decent job in the film, but the kid Max played by Dakota Goyo, and the robots we were introduced to are the most entertaining part of the film. Max was just full of fun exciting energy and he was an incredibly likable character, you're rooting for the kid throughout the film, and you want everything to work out for the poor kid. As for the boxing robots, they were awesome. I had a blast watching all of the fights play out. The main Robot boxer Atom, was also another great likable character in the story, sure he had absolutely no dialogue, but there was a personality within him that made you care for the bucket of bolts. As for the special effects... I have no complaints, they were great.
Regardless of the films faults I thought the movie was an entertaining popcorn flick and is worth watching on the big screen.