Real Steel Review

Comments (0) By Nick Pinkerton Thursday, Oct 6 2011

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Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a two-bit trainer working the state fair circuit in a not-too-distant future. His line is robot fighting, a sport that has absorbed the audience for boxing, MMA, and, apparently, demolition derby. Feckless Charlie gets a taste of responsibility tending his estranged 11-year-old son, Max (Dakota Goyo). Touchy though things are between them, Max is a quick study and helps to refurbish a salvaged old sparring robot into a legitimate contender. In a story predicated on the surpassing of man by machine, Real Steel doesn't engage in the same—it's what a publicist might describe as an “effects movie with heart.” Real Steel concerns down-and-outers getting their one last title shot—but fit, spry Jackman is hard to buy as a hard-luck case, while elfin child actor Dakota Goyo could only be a cloying child actor named "Dakota." On the multiplex stage, the subservience of action to character development has become a rare enough arrangement of priorities to cause a stir whenever it occurs, but the development of simplistic characters along overfamiliar lines isn't intrinsically preferable to pure sensation or the free run of imagination—and there is little of either here.

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3 comments
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Joe Lopez
Joe Lopez

Great review! I’ve been a fan of Hugh Jackman for some time now and I think he was great in Real Steel. My coworkers from DISH told me it was good but I had my doubts. I finally watched it and I was hooked from the start and it never had a dull moment. I had access to my Blockbuster @ Home feature where I have access to thousands of movies, games and TV shows. I can stream a show to my TV or iPad while I wait for my next DVD shipped to my door. If I want another movie I can go to a local Blockbuster store for a fast swap as many times as I want. I pay a low $10 per month which provides all my entertainment needs.

UnderSerf
UnderSerf

Meh - they're Waldos not robots, they're just big remote-control toys. ASIMO is a true robot, but any dishwasher is more automated than these Rock-Em-Sock-Ems...

Nathaniel Bowman
Nathaniel Bowman

Surprised and saddened that the movie doesn't seem to take it's concept as far as it seems to by the ads.

I mean, come on, have the moviemakers never seen the Crank movies? They take their concepts Beyond the Impossible, and those are lower budget movies. As it is, this seems like a lazy evening project for IL&M to do after Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

 
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