Starring: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly and Kevin Durand
Directed By: Shawn Levy
Screenplay By: John Gatins
Story By: Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven
Based On the Short Story “Steel” By: Richard Matheson
Produced By: Shawn Levy, Susan Montford and Don Murphy
Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 127 minutes
Website: steelgetsreal.com
Budget: $80 million (estimated)
Genre: Action / Drama / Sci-Fi
Release Date: October 7, 2011
In the very near future, audiences will suddenly tire of the sweet science of boxing, hungry for ultra-violent entertainment with winner-take-all stakes. With the invention of robot fighters, humans like Hugh Jackman (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) will be rendered obsolete, trading in their boxing gloves for shoddy remote controls. Living on the road and scavenging parts from fallen fighters, these former contenders will flock to whatever state fair or underground fight club will pay them enough for beer money.
This is the world of Real Steel. I know this because it is stated implicitly during the course of the movie, as Jackman’s rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold explains the history of robot boxing to his estranged son (Dakota Goyo, Thor), despite the fact that the boy has done nothing but display a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the sport since re-entering his father’s life. In the world of Real Steel, robots box and humans speak only in exposition.
Take Evengeline Lilly (“Lost”), for instance, the tomboyish love interest struggling to make rent on the outdated gym where her father once taught Jackman to box. Instead of revealing the many layers of the couple’s prickly relationship organically over the course of the movie, the writers simply have the pair recount their entire history to each other while hatching a scheme to restore a legendary Japanese punch-bot for use in underground fights.
Thanks to Jackman’s shortsighted recklessness, that robot doesn’t even make it through its first round, but its unique, voice-activated control system is the perfect fit for his son’s pet project, a first-generation sparring bot named Atom they discover in a scrapyard. Though smaller and less powerful than the current models, Atom was designed to withstand maximum punishment. This, coupled with Jackman’s real-life boxing knowledge, gives him an edge in hustling greedy promoters.
Soon, Team Atom isn’t just raking in money, it’s becoming a crowd favorite. After a single professional match, spunky Goyo grabs the microphone and challenges the undefeated heavyweight champion Zeus, a menacing black behemoth pulsing with a sickly green power core. Zeus’s handlers, who are foreign and therefore evil, must accept the challenge or be humiliated. I know this because it was told directly to me by ESPN announcers doling out exposition on the eve of the big match.
Real Steel is the latest high-concept vehicle from Shawn Levy, the director of the Night at the Museum franchise. As with those films, Levy takes pains to establish a believable reality before inserting more fantastic elements. Using a healthy mix of both computer-generated images and animatronics, Levy ensures that the two-ton gladiators actually look like they’re carrying weight. More importantly, it makes for more believable interactions between Atom and his little boy trainer.
Unfortunately, the technical merits of the film can’t overcome the extreme shortcomings of the script; this is a movie that prefers to tell its audience instead of showing them. Instead of using flashbacks to show Jackman at his prime as a prizefighter, Lilly launches into a wistful monologue about it. Instead of establishing Jackman’s past or his strained relationship with his dead wife’s family, his sister-in-law just lists off his character flaws in court. There are also more little boy/big robot dance sequences than I have ever cared to witness.
Most frustratingly, instead of giving the audience a knock-down, drag-out fight between Atom and Zeus, the filmmakers gloss over large portions of the climactic battle through a lifeless montage that alternates between the announcers calling the action and Jackman saying the names of punches, which is about as exciting as it sounds. In the final round, the writers simply throw in the towel, stealing the end of Rocky and grafting it awkwardly to the end of the Rumble in the Jungle, perhaps the two most famous boxing matches in all of history.
Luckily for Team Atom, this is the world of Real Steel, and nobody’s ever heard of a good boxing match.
2 Stars (out of 5)
