|
Real Steel
| Released |
14 October 2011 |
| Director |
Shawn Levy |
Starring
|
Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo, Kevin Durand, Anthony Mackie, Hope Davis |
| Writer(s) |
John Gatins |
Producer(s)
|
Shawn Levy, Susan Montford, Don Murphy, Robert Zemeckis |
| Origin |
United States, India |
| Running Time |
127 minutes |
| Genre |
Action, drama |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
’Rocky’ with robots!
It would be understandable if one was to approach this film with trepidation. Australian star Hugh Jackman hasn’t made a good film since the second part of the X-Men trilogy. He badly needs a hit to maintain any claim to be an ‘A-list’ star. The fact that he’s teamed up with director Shawn Levy doesn’t bode well though. Levy has been responsible for so many crimes against cinema that it’s surprising that an international court hasn’t been formed to track him down. There’s been the awful Night At The Museum films, the execrable Cheaper By The Dozen and worst of all, the remake of The Pink Panther with Steve Martin. Levy certainly has a lot to answer for.
His new film features Jackman as Charlie Denton, a washed-up former boxer down on his luck. It’s set in a near future when boxing between humans has been replaced by bouts between robots instead. Charlie now ekes out a living as a promoter of robot fights entering his battered old heap into low-grade bouts all over the country. He’s heavily in debt and when his robot is destroyed in a challenge match against a bull, he’s really in trouble.
His problems seem to get worse when he’s told his ex-girlfriend has died, leaving behind a son, Max (Dakota Goyo), that he hasn’t seen since he was a baby. His ex-girlfriend’s sister Debra (Hope Davis) desperately wants to adopt Max and Charlie wants nothing to do with him. However, noticing that Debra now has a wealthy older husband (James Rebhorn) he takes advantage, only agreeing to grant custody to Debra to get some money out of them. He uses the money to buy a new robot but as part of the deal agrees to look after Max for the summer.
Max knows Charlie’s scam but insists on coming on the road with him as he’s a big fan of robot boxing. Charlie’s new robot is destroyed in his first fight and he and Max are reduced to looking in robot junkyards to try to put another robot together. It’s here that Max stumbles across ‘Atom’ an old sparring robot. Charlie tells him it’s useless but Max insists on bringing it back with him. Max starts training the robot to fight and to Charlie’s disbelief, he wins his first bout. He starts becoming a cult attraction and comes to the attention of the owners of ‘Zeus’ the undefeated World Champion robot fighter.
This is based loosely on a short story, Steel by Richard Matheson, which was written in the 1950s, but there’s no escaping the similarities to the plot of Rocky. They also throw in aspects of The Champ, with the kid and the washed-up boxer. It is hugely derivative and cheesy as hell but somehow against all the odds it actually works.
A lot of it is due to the terrific performances from Jackman and Goyo in the lead roles. Jackman is surprisingly convincing as the gruff but likable chancer and Goyo manages the rare feat of actually being a Hollywood child actor who you don’t want to strangle. There’s decent support fromAnthony Mackie as a bookie and Kevin Durand as the redneck baddie. However Evangeline Lilly will have to do better than this sappy turn if she wants a post-Lost career in movies.
The highlights though are the robot fighting scenes that are far more entertaining than the tedious, indiscriminate battles from the Transformers movies. They also make you care about the main robot as a character, hinting that it might be self-aware, something that may be explored more in a sequel.
Hopefully technology will catch up soon to make the scenes from this movie possible in the real life cause these fighting robots are goddamn cool!!
-
Jim O’Connor |
