In the near future, boxing involves bouts between two massive robots in an equally massive ring. Charlie (Hugh Jackman), a former human boxer himself, is having a bit of trouble with cash flow even if he has no problem getting every robot he acquires destroyed in the ring. But his struggles continue out of the ring, where he is forced to take care of Max (Dakota Goyo), the son he never wanted. By chance, Max discovers a fully built robot, Atom, discarded in a junkyard. He retrieves it, and convinces Charlie to help train him to fight in the big leagues.

What works for and against Real Steel is that there is not much else to the plot after this. Much like the recent sports film travesty *Warrior, the set-up and execution is in the synopsis. Knowing what we do about film history and genre tropes, I imagine you can figure out exactly what comes next piece by piece. And as much as I enjoyed watching the film, the predictability hangs over it like a plague. It really is Rocky with robots, and it makes very little attempt to try anything new. It finds a niche very early on, and just keeps using it hoping it will not break. So while everyone loves an underdog story, it may be a little hard to swallow the idea that this film gives us nothing new, and just does everything that we have seen way too many times before.

While Real Steel has trouble coming to terms with how predictable a sports film it essentially is, it does do one thing significantly different than you might think. What it does differently, and what I enjoyed immensely, was how it connected and reimagined human boxing with robot boxing. The sweat and smell of the unsanctioned underground leagues, the spectacle of the pay per view spectacular in a live arena; it seemed silly watching the trailers and thinking of robots taking the place of humans in the ring. But it is so naturally executed here that you wonder why you doubted the film in the first place. Even better, it puts you right in the ring with these robot juggernauts, so you throw and feel every punch. Every precaution is taken to reinvent and enhance the sport of boxing, to the point where it makes a case for this idea being viable in the future. Much the same goes for the technology in the film, which seems like a natural progression to where we are heading in reality. For such a silly and ridiculous concept, it seems to have its fingers on the pulse of a hotbed of real life ideas.

Another great element to the film is the special effects that bring the robots to life. Using a nearly seamless mix of animatronics and CGI, we watch as these robots bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. They look, feel and act real, managing to beat the life out of one another in one scene, and then silently emote without the use of any real expressions. Some scenes look simply dazzling, almost looking too real. While an early scene involving a bull looks awful, every scene afterwards just looks better and better. I had a hard time distinguishing the puppets from the CGI, it is that well conveyed on-screen. And really, when was the last time a big budget film like this went with animatronics over full blown CGI? Bravo to whoever made that decision, because it brings an epic sense of realism to the film that helps drive home the film’s ideas better than a film like Transformers: Dark of the Moon ever could.

Thankfully, Jackman is also one of the best things about Real Steel. The trailers suggested he was playing the character very loose and over-the-top (that “Let’s make some money!” line does not help the case against this), but he surprisingly is rather reserved for the most part. He plays a washed up has-been very well, and manages to really make the audience feel for him -- even when he is being a reprehensible jerk. He brings the charisma and edge to the role that he has perfected as Wolverine, and helps rise above the material he is given. He is given a lot of silly stuff to do no doubt, but he smiles and glides through it with ease. He has not done all that much between X-Men films over the past few years, so it is nice to see he still has it in him to create an endearing character.

As Max, Goyo brings gentleness and naïveté to the role that really sells the idea of robots boxing. Seeing the wonder in his eyes is like watching our own wonder playing out on-screen. He is a more than capable child actor, and I look forward to seeing him light up screens in the future. Evangeline Lilly, as Charlie’s love interest Bailey, is good in small doses, but is not afforded the time or development to really be anything other than a plot device. Anthony Mackie is great as the bookie Finn, and even if the role is completely one note and silly, Kevin Durand does pretty good as Charlie’s nemesis Ricky.

What I found really took away from the film was the focus on the broken family unit between Charlie and Max. When they are apart and interacting with others or alongside robot Atom, the film works increasingly well. But when the family struggles start being the focal point of scenes, it just feels pushed and rushed, as if it was an afterthought to add a bit more drama to the film. Jackman does what he can to salvage these scenes, but they just became progressively more irritating and more predictable as the film goes on. I wanted to ignore them and enjoy watching the boxing robots, but even thinking back to these scenes now, they just seem overdone and out of place. The film runs at a baffling 127 minutes, and a good chunk of that is through extended scenes pushing the family dynamic. Less would have been better, and perhaps would have assisted in a lot less of Danny Elfman’s surprisingly atrocious and annoyingly upbeat score.

I wanted to enjoy Real Steel a lot more than I actually did. Jackman is great, and the ideas at the core of the film about robot boxing and technology are more astounding than I would like to give the film credit for. But its inherent predictability, not to mention a forced family friendly redemptive storyline, drag the film into a mediocrity it does not deserve. This should have been a really fun movie about a ridiculous idea that turned out surprisingly well. Instead, it is a film that struggles between the idea of what it is and what it wants to be, and is never able to truly balance itself out.
 
   -- David Baldwin