Running Time: 2 hours, 7 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Shawn Levy
Quick Impressions:
In the future, everything will change—except the design of Dr. Pepper cans. Robots will take over boxing. HP will be king of cell phones and tablet computers. Wind farming will increase slightly. And…that’s really it. Everything else will stay exactly the same—especially those Dr. Pepper cans.
The premise of Real Steel is totally ridiculous. I never believed the vision of the future the movie created. It seemed beyond contrived. I realize the story takes place in the near future, but they treat a robot who won a title in 2016 like an antique has-been, so you’d imagine that they’re ten years in the future at the very least. Considering how much technology and culture have changed since 2001, you’d expect to see some more substantial differences in 2021 and beyond.
Despite this silly premise, Real Steel is lots of fun to watch and packs a bigger emotional punch than it probably should.
The Good:
Visually, the movie is almost perfect. Real Steel does a better job of advancing the plot visually than any other movie I’ve seen in 2011. The movie could be silent, and the audience could still easily follow the story by relying on the visuals alone. Since the story focuses on the successes of a sparring bot who has a shadow mode and mimics movements it sees, this method of showing the story progress (without particularly needing to tell) is impressive on many levels. The movie doesn’t need sound to communicate what is happening onscreen to the audience.
That said, the sound in the movie is fantastic and tremendously enhances the theatrical experience. Danny Elfman’s score fits what is happening onscreen perfectly, and whoever chose the songs to accompany the action scenes is a genius. The picture tells you what is happening. The sound makes you care.
Hugh Jackman is thoroughly engaging as Charlie Kenton, a down-and-out boxer turned down-and-out robot fight promoter. One of the less tired elements of the plot is that as the story opens, Kenton couldn’t care less about salvaging his relationship with his son. He simply views Max as another piece of collateral.
Young actor Dakota Goyo makes a captivating Max, easily the strongest and most likeable character in the movie. You can see why Max so easily riles up the crowd in the fighting arena. He has the same effect on the audience in the movie theater.
The Bad:
The story itself feels a little…lacking. I kept thinking of the Samuel Johnson quote, “the part is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” In this case, that assessment is a little harsh, but the plot is the weakest part of this film, and the character development is the second weakest. The strongest and most powerful character, Charlie Kenton’s irrepressibly optimistic son Max, does make watching the movie more emotionally rewarding. He’s just not a particularly original character, despite being a particularly likeable one.
Besides feeling a bit stale in general, the story’s biggest problem is that it runs out of steam before the (thoroughly predictable) ending. Despite Charlie’s speech about robots replacing humans in the ring because people wanted higher stakes and more destruction, when you’re watching two robots fight, the stakes simply aren’t as high as when you’re watching a human being getting pummeled. Charlie gets a needed wake-up call and a new appreciation for life and his place in the world, but after the father/son story is resolved, what happens in the ring doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s easy to stay on your feet, keep punching, and remember your technique when a sparring bot is the one taking all the hits.
Also, the characters opposing Charlie and Max are like ridiculous, over-the-top cartoon characters. Every single antagonist seems to have come from a different sub-genre of animation. Given the kid-friendly nature of the story, I’m not sure that this is entirely a bad thing, but it’s certainly distracting.
Best Scene:
Like a fighting bot assembled from junkyard scrap, Real Steel is a movie that manages to be much better than the sum of its parts. The whole movie is good and makes a positive impression, but it’s hard to point to one scene that’s really any stronger than the others. Instead of having a truly strong scene, I’d say the movie had a number of outstanding moments within mediocre scenes, and most of these moments were outstanding because of the impression they made visually.
Best Action Sequence:
Definitely, the last action sequence is the best one. During every robot fighting sequence, the accompanying music (often mainly a song with a driving beat) easily engages the audience. The robotic smashing is entertaining, but the power of the last scene comes from the performances of Jackman and Goyo as a man remembering who he is, and a boy delighted to watch the transformation.
The Performances:
I loved Dakota Goyo as Max so much that I began to imagine having a son who looked like Goyo and naming him Max. Hugh Jackman was also great as Charlie, particularly because the script didn’t help him much. Somehow, Jackman managed to create a semi-realistic character. Evangeline Lilly was good as Charlie’s oldest and most frustrated fan Bailey Tallet. Lilly and Hope Davis as Max’s aunt were the two characters in the entire movie who didn’t feel like they’d been lifted from a cartoon. Anthony Mackie made Finn sympathetic and fun, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a villain easier to boo and hiss at than Kevin Durand’s Ricky.
Overall:
Real Steel is fun to watch. The images tell the story. The sound engages the audience. The characters seem vaguely familiar, like we’ve met them somewhere before. Fortunately, though, they’re so charming that we probably liked them then, too. The movie has flaws, but it’s hard to notice them as you’re drawn in by the action, the color, the spectacle, the sound, and the heart of Real Steel.