I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Real Steel, given its “family friendly” imprimatur (since I’m such a tough, macho guy, grrr). A film about a boy and his estranged dad bonding? Meh. On the other hand, robot fights! Real Steel turned out to be a slick, superficial, predictable but mildly pleasant time-waster, albeit one riddled with logical and dramatic and narrative flaws. But it finished in the top spot at the box-office in its first week of release, so I suppose it delivers what some people want, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it myself.
Charlie (Hugh Jackman, generally likeable in the role) makes a precarious living managing robot fighters, who by the year 2020 have replaced human boxers (Charlie’s previous occupation). He learns his one-time girlfriend has died, and he’s now the legal guardian of their son Max. Neither Max nor Charlie is especially intererested in forming a family together—Max’s wealthy aunt and uncle want to adopt him—but Charlie makes a deal with the uncle to take Max off their hands for the summer. Charlie’s professional and personal incompetence result in the destruction of his last robot fighter; as father and son scavenge through a junkyard in search of parts (to steal—first we’ve got an illegitimate kid, now outright thievery, both of which are glossed over), Max finds a discarded robot named “Atom.” Out-moded but rugged and imbued with the ability to mimic actions it observes, Atom becomes Max and Charlie’s unlikely ticket to the top of the robot-boxing world.
Charlie explains that robots replaced human fighters because audiences wanted more “extreme” action in the ring. However, Real Steel demonstrates, perhaps inadvertently, that this substitution results in a loss of one of the very things that makes boxing (or wrestling or any type of competition) compelling—the humanity of the contestants. The movie’s robot fighters have no feelings and no particular “personality” aside from their visual differences and technical abilities. They’re clearly controlled at all times by human beings—they aren’t even “programmed” and sent into the ring to fight independently, as one might imagine—and as a result are nothing more than puppets.
On the one hand, I applaud Real Steel for resisting the temptation to make the robots sentient (there is one brief bit where Max suggests Atom has the capacity to think, but this is never explored again), and for being faithful to its basic premise of robot fighting. However, this means we don’t especially care about the robots themselves: they aren’t feeling pain in the ring, they aren’t being brave or cowardly or stupid or crafty, they aren’t morally good or bad (except as extensions of their owner-controller). So we don’t have any sort of emotional connection to them. Even movies about horse racing or dog fighting feature competition between living creatures with whom we can empathise as living creatures. In Real Steel, we only want Atom to win because he’s owned and operated by Max and Charlie, we don’t give a damn about the punishment he takes in the ring because…he’s a machine. When we watch a demolition derby or a NASCAR race, do we say “oh, that poor Chevrolet just got crushed?” Heck no.
The film could have made something of this disconnect, some point about how video games—and, extrapolating the concept, impersonal weapons of war such as cruise missiles and killer drones—have desensitised us to violence, but Real Steel chooses not to address such issues. Of course, it skimps on a lot of other things as well. This is hardly a dramatic examination of emotional estrangement and reconciliation: although the scenes between Charlie and Max are handled effectively, everything is just too damn predictable and familiar and quick. It’s nice to see Charlie finally allow himself to reciprocate the romantic feelings of cute gym operator Bailey, after (alternately) treating her as a pal (to be exploited) or another attractive woman with whom to flirt (Charlie’s womanising nature is only lightly touched upon, but the clues are there), but this movie isn’t (by any stretch) about Charlie and Bailey. As I’ve said before, it’s not exactly fair to criticise a film for not being a different film—the filmmakers made their choices and if I don’t agree with them, that’s tough for me—and if Real Steel takes a lot of short-cuts, dramatically and narratively, it makes up for them in other ways.
It is legitimate, however, to complain about a few things. The aforementioned “shadow function” is initially utilised in the film to allow Atom to mimic Max’s dance moves. This isn’t as obnoxious as it sounds—a hip hop robot, oh brother—simply because it is first presented as Max having fun and then exploited by Charlie as an attention-grabbing gimmick. Both of these seem entirely natural and aren’t shoe-horned into the movie as a lame excuse for a dumb musical number. Later, when Charlie teaches Atom various boxing moves by demonstrating them himself, this is again logically acceptable.
But then, in the final rounds of the championship fight, after Atom’s voice-recognition software is disabled by the beating he’s taking, Charlie uses the shadow function—boxing by himself outside the ring, so that Atom can mimic his movements against his opponent. This is both dramatically and logically flawed. In the first place, Charlie’s reluctance to discuss his boxing career and his initial, panicked refusal to control Atom via shadow-boxing suggests he stopped boxing due to some traumatic event, and he’s physically and/or mentally incapable of going through the motions. But this apparently isn’t true at all, so he just seems neurotic and weak.
The other problem with this aspect of Real Steel is rather nerdy and nit-picking on my part, but hey, it’s my review: if Atom is in “shadow mode,” he must look at Charlie in order to imitate him—it’s clear Charlie’s not wearing a motion-capture suit or is “jacked in” to Atom in any way, the shadow function requires visual input. But…Charlie is outside the ring. Don’t you think that constantly looking outside the ring at Charlie would put Atom at a slight disadvantage against his giant robot opponent who’s in the ring and trying to knock his block off? I’m just sayin’…
Still Real Steel is blandly palatable overall. Jackman is fine, Evangeline Lilly is spunky and attractive as Bailey, Dakota Goyo (in real life, he has brothers named “Dallas” and “Devon,” because of course he does) is believable as Max. I’m not sure if the villains are stiff caricatures because they’re written that way (redneck bully, icy Russian babe, taciturn Japanese guy), or the performances are wooden, or a combination of the two. The production values are adequate, and the CGI work on the robots is quite satisfactory (machines aren’t alive so they aren’t expected to move or act like living creatures and thus we aren’t constantly—if subconsciously—comparing CGI with reality; furthermore, some care has been taken to give the impression of weight and mass).
Real Steel helped a couple of hours pass pleasantly. However, I didn’t get the same sort of emotional charge one might experience when watching Rocky or The Fighter or Million Dollar Baby or any other “real” boxing movie: there was no pulse-pounding, adrenaline-charged excitement, I didn’t cheer or boo, I wasn’t on the edge of my seat during the final bout. And I didn’t choke up when Charlie and Max reconciled, or when Charlie hugged Bailey, or…any other time. I just didn’t feel it.
Forget about any “heart-warming” stuff. Like the robot fighters themselves, Real Steel has no heart (except maybe an artificial one that pumps oil or something). That’s not a criticism, it’s just a statement. See this if you will for the robot fighting. I mean, they’re robots who fight! How cool is that?
