Real Steel

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 127 Minutes

















Click below to watch the Real Steel trailer.



Set in the near future, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Real Steel has down on his luck ex-boxer Hugh Jackman using the last of his money getting fighting gigs for his second-hand robot boxers - which gets trashed. When Jackson gets temporary custody of his orphaned son Dakota Goyo, Jackson reluctantly uses Goyo's boxing robot to earn more cash as he travels from city to city searching for his next boxing match.

Because the money went from human boxers to robot boxers for more violence, Jackman searches for parts to make another robot in a junkyard. After inadvertently saving Goyo's life in the junkyard, Goyo scavenges the remains of the small sparring robot Atom, that saved Goyo's life, from the junkyard. When Jackman's former girlfriend Evangeline Lilly overhauls Atom for Goyo, Goyo soon persuades Jackman to coordinate Atom's boxing skills. Built to take punches, Atom soon goes up the ranks of both the underground robot league and the World Robot League.

This movie is basically The Champ with robots. Or to get a better picture, it is The Champ, Rocky, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and Robocop - without the criminal violence. This is basically a remake of The Twilight Zone's episode Steel, adapted from the 1956 short story by Richard Matheson. With Goyo in the film, it is a very cute human film - but very predictable. As Jackman's son, Goyo holds his own against Jackman.

The filmmakers wanted to make this movie in the "near future." Because this is a "science fiction" film, the opening shots can be confusing as it is set in a normal-looking Mid-West. You might think you are in the wrong theater - or rented the wrong movie - if you have not seen the movie before, because the filmmakers wanted the movie to be very familiar to the audience. The film being familiar is also evidenced by the various product placements, including Hewlett Packard and ESPN.

The robot boxing fights were motion-captured from professional boxers - who were supervised by world boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard. Leonard's training also made Jackman's boxing performance believable. A part of the boxing scenes is like a computerized version of the old toy "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots" by Marx/Mattel. The Rocky movies have a big influence on the film, with the final fight scene basically being a blow-by-blow scene from Rocky IV. The operatic championship music was by composer Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo fame.

Rated PG-13 for language and violence. Running time 127 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.