By Carlos Serrano
It sounds like a no-brainer: Hugh Jackman in a movie about robots fighting. Sounds like sweet, if not slightly insane, Hollywood magic. Somewhere along the way though, “Real Steel” just ended up flat on its back.
“Real Steel” depicts a future where the only real change is that technology has gotten thinner and brighter. Oh, and robots have replaced humans as boxers.
Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is an ex-boxer trying to make a living in the underground world of robot boxing. His world is turned upside down when his ex-girlfriend dies and Max (Dakota Goyo), the son he hasn’t seen in 10 years, joins him for the summer. When his son finds an old robot named Atom, they teach him how to fight and travel the boxing circuit winning cash and growing closer.
The movie’s biggest enemy is its own script. A boy, his robot and his father travel the country pitting the robot in boxing matches. This brings the father and son closer together. Fine. Thirty minutes into the film though, the movie hints at the fact that Atom may be sentient. It is never brought up again in any serious way.
There was so much potential there. It is painful when the movie throws it away in favor of more scenes with the boy acting painfully precocious. It’s as though the writers were scared of bringing up an interesting moral dilemma and spent the rest of the movie apologizing. “Sorry for almost bringing up an interesting plot twist,” they might’ve said. “Look, the kid is dancing with the robot! Isn’t that wacky?” Yes, the boy and the robot dance. Yes, to hip-hop. Alright already, the audience gets it.
The movie’s antagonists aren’t even all that threatening. Of course, they’re antagonists in the loosest sense of the word. The owners of Zeus, the flashy modern robot Atom fights at the end, never do anything more malicious than stand around and look vaguely threatening. Frankly, Charlie’s actions at the beginning of the film make him seem more villainous. This is a character that went back to his truck and left his son in a junkyard, on a cliff, at night, in the rain and didn’t lift a hand to help him haul a robot up said cliff.
Still, no one can say this movie is not visually impressive. At least in the robot department. With the exception of Zeus, a traditionally sleek and boring robot, every mechanical fighter has a unique look. From a two-headed robot modeled after skyscrapers to one made up of the discarded parts of other robots like a technological Frankenstein’s monster. There was a range of design that fans probably expected from the “Transformers” movies.
All the fancy robots, however, cannot hide the fact that the movie was confused about what it wanted to be. Is it really about a father and son learning to love each other? Then why make the father so cartoonishly awful that it makes the viewer hope the son runs away? Is it a movie about a robot built for battle that develops a mind of its own? Then why bring up that plot point only to never pick it back up again?
The bottom line is that “Real Steel” never seems confident in what its intention is as a movie. And without that, it’s just eye candy.
