Director:
Shawn Levy
Cast:
Hugh Jackman
Dakota Goyo
Evangeline Lilly
Hope Davis
Rated: PG-13
Insert your “Rock’em Sock’em Robots” joke here!
Real Steal follows the story of Charlie Kenton (Jackman) who living in a future world where the big fighting sport is actually robot boxing instead of human boxing.
Kenton at one time was a great boxer himself and a contender for the title however once the fight game changed he started to go into a bit of a spiral downwards and now has any robot he can get, fight in any match up he can get.
One day after another loss, he finds out that the mother of his son Max (Goyo) has died and someone needs to take care of him. After making a deal with Max’s aunt (Davis), Charlie decides to take Max with him on a trip to enter in some fighting mach ups. The two have a bad relationship at the beginning, however, after finding an old forgotten robot in the junk yard that’s actually a good fighter it starts bringing them closer together.
The story basically took a lot of sports and inspirational movies and poured them all together to make the film. And despite being cliched to a high degree, it works fairly well here. The film moves along at a good pace and never feels boring, which is a great thing to have at a kids movie.
The acting was fine all around. I was really impressed with Dakota Goyo who played Max, it’s always nice to see a child actor that isn’t completely annoying. Hugh Jackman is the real heart of the picture, though, delivering his usual charm. There is a good level of chemistry between the two also, which makes for a lot of fun and humorous moments.
The highlight of the movie is probably the robot fighting. The robots in this film look really awesome and have some great battles. As an added plus you can actually see what’s going on in the fights unlike the “Transformer” movies. The special effects looked great and really brought the machines to life.
Overall, Real Steal is a fairly standard sports movie that is bulked up the actors and the fights in it. I put it at a solid 3 out of 5.
Matthew Liedke on Film 