Real Steel is built to last and solid entertainment

Real Steel is set in the near future, when robot boxing is very popular.   Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a promoter who has discovered that his long forgotten son is limbo due to the death of his mother.  Charlie is not the father type and is more concerned with scoring the next fight rather than being a good dad.

The story is very common so far.  Introduce the element of robot boxing and the story can be entertaining or verge off into absurdity.  Is Real Steel like The Champ with robots or a robot movie with Hugh Jackman? In an odd way, it’s neither, but is one of more entertaining and enjoyable movies I’ve seen in a long time.

Kenton used to be a great professional fighter, but just never made it to the big leagues.  When he’s not trolling for fights he’s building robots at the boxing gym, owned by Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly), who is also Kenton’s sometimes girlfriend.

When Kenton agrees to take temporary custody of his 11 year old son Max (Dakota Gayo) the movie takes off.  Quite often when a movie introduces the youth character, the child actor will drag down the action and speed of the plot.  Real Steel accelerates in action and enjoyment when Max is brought in.  That’s all the more surprising because Max isn’t used in the typical ways that action movies use child characters.

Child characters are usually weak and used in a situation where they sneak in or are the cause of problems.  If that’s not the case then they’re bratty, unrealistic or annoying.  Rare is the child character that adds to the action movie, without taking away from its enjoyment.

Max and Kenton fight some robots, do some father/son bonding, travel the country and end up with a contender that can take them to the robot boxing championship.   There are also two minor sub plots about the Kenton/Tallet  relationship and who will ultimately take care of Max.

Real Steel is an entertaining action/sci-fi movie because it never takes itself too seriously.  Robot boxing takes place in the year 2020, so the future isn’t too unrealistic with flying cars, just modern enough to be different and believable.

There was some CGI in the movie but it was used sparingly.  Nineteen 8-foot tall audio-animatronic robots were built so that the human actors had something to act with instead of pure CGI.  The fight scenes used motion capture with professional boxers so that the fights would look as real as possible.

At one point I was crying and wondering to myself, “Am I really crying during a robot boxing movie?”  I attributed the crying to my wife being pregnant and her erratic hormones rubbing off on me.  For a movie about robot boxing Real Steel is all heart and makes you care about the characters.  It also helps that the characters in the movie don’t always win.  The movie does end a little cold and abrupt, but has built up so much good will until that point that you’re willing to let it slide.

Real Steal is rated PG-13 and is a great movie for kids 10 and over, but some of the language is a bit salty.  The violence in Real Steel is mostly robot on robot, but there are a couple scenes of human violence.  You’ll watch Real Steel for your children, but you’ll end up enjoying it just as much.