| Real Steel (2011) | |
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Rating: 7.1/10 (354,257 votes) Director: Shawn Levy Writer: John Gatins, Dan Gilroy, Jeremy Leven Stars: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo Runtime: 127 min Rated: PG-13 Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi Released: 07 Oct 2011 |
| Plot: In the near future, robot boxing is a top sport. A struggling ex-boxer feels he's found a champion in a discarded robot. | |
Another review from the old archive.
Based loosly on the short story ‘Steel’ by Richard Matheson (an author well know for penning What Dreams May Come, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend), with a liberal dose of Rocky thrown in for good measure, Real Steel delivers exactly what you expect after seeing the trailer.
The year is 2020, and boxing has been long gone as we know it, replaced with robot boxing. Hugh Jackman plays the part of Charlie Kenton, an ex-boxer who never hit his big time, who now enters robots into underground fights to try to get money to pay off debts to loan sharks. Circumstances leave him re-uniting with his 11 year old son, Max, whom he abandonded years prior, and he reluctantly takes him on the road with him to fights. Scavenging a scap-yard for parts, the duo find an old sparring robot named Atom, which is entered into a small fight. As one fight turns to another, it seems that there may be more to Atom than anyone would expect.
The film is pretty formulaic from start to finish, and offers nothing original or surprising throughout. From the father/son abandonment and atonement issues, to the struggling boxer proving himself in small fights before challenging the title holder, you could state at the start of the film exactly what will happen (and at what stage) and chances are you will be spot on. Yet despite the utter lack of originality on offer, you can’t help but get carried along by a fun, entertaining film with a perfectly likeable cast – and that includes the robots.
Jackman plays the roguish Kenton in his usual likeable manner, and handles the slowly building father-son relationship well. Goyo (as Max) manages to achieve the status of ‘kid in a film that isn’t annoying’ and gives the film the emotional core by which the story will hang. Support from Evangeline Lily amongst others is effectively strong, with Kevin Durand (who appeared alongside Jackman in X-Men Origins: Wolverine as Fred Dukes: aka The Blob) wrestling to steal his moments from Jackman as the ‘bad guy’ of the piece.
However, the real stars of this film are the robots themselves. A solid meld of animatronics (26 full size robots were built for the film) and CGI, they look so real and believable that you easily start to believe they actually exist. The fights are not the jarring clash of far-too-many parts that any robot battles were in Transformers, instead they are real in their intensity and detail. The simplicity of design makes each robot instantly identifiable, and each dent or scrape gives them character. Atom, due to a few battle scars, appears to have a slight smile expression on his robot head, giving him a ‘softer, human-like’ look. The fights were choreographed and motion captured from stunt fighters, with the robots them mapped over the body movements, which makes each punch or swing perfectly fluid in motion, and each impact flawlessly performed. There were no moments where the effects looked artificial, which is credited to effects wizard Jason Matthews and his team at Legacy Effects.
I suppose another star of this film is director Shaun Levy. Much like Jon Favreau when he made Zathura, Levy seemed like a strange choice for this type of film. His back catalogue of Big Fat Liar, Cheaper By The Dozen, Pink Panther, and Night At The Museum are far removed from this film. yes, in the ‘Museum’ films he has played with effects work, but it was done in a jokey manner, whereas Real Steel is serious in tone. Also kudos must be given for the look of the future. It is all too often that directors and producers making films about the ‘not too distant future’ add lots of flying cars and make all the buildings white and towering entities. Thankfully, this future is not that different from our present, with just little touches like holographic phones, and (of course) big battling robots making it clear it is the future. They even chose to not have robots walking the streets, driving buses, or doing anything but fight – it is clear that robots are not prominent in society in this future, they are used like wrecking machines in staged arenas and that is all. All this makes for a believable future – after all, why would the world be much different 10 years from now anyway, given that 10 years ago the world was pretty much the same as it is today?
This is a great little film, which will appeal to the young and the old equally. Perhaps it could have strayed a little from the formulaic nature, and attempted to surprise the audience a bit, which would have made it better. But even despite the fact that if you have seen Rocky then you know how it will pan out, the film manages to pace along well enough that you don’t mind.
