Welcome, please, to Robop Cinema, where massive mechanical men whale the tar and transistors out of one another while up in the stands human yahoos bellow their guts out at the sight of all that heavy-metal bopping and bashing.
Imagine what you’d get if you squished “Rocky” and “Wall-E” together in a giant industrial press: a gooey, drippy mess, leaking lubricant and metal shards all over the factory floor.
That’s what director Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum,” “Date Night”) offers up in “Real Steel,” a picture that shamelessly purloins the plucky-pugilist-punching-his-way-out-of-his-class plot line of “Rocky.” In place of a lunkheaded human hunk like Sylvester Stallone, it gives us a mute-but-cute (in an ungainly sort of way) 8-foot robot hero who could be the hulking relative of Pixar’s adorable little Wall-E, though with far less personality.
The time is 2020, robot boxing has replaced the human variety, and the hero ’bot, Atom, is literally plucked off a scrap heap by a scrappy little 11-year-old played by newcomer Dakota Goyo. The kid is the estranged son of a ne’er-do-well ex-boxer played with maximum abrasiveness by Hugh Jackman.
Jackman’s character, Charlie, is a stubbly, beer-for-breakfast runaway dad with a severe gambling jones and a habit of not paying his debts. Leg-breakers want to have a little talk with him about that matter, but he doesn’t do much to hide from them. Instead, he spends most of his time and all his cash buying, rebuilding and betting on ’bots who routinely lose their bouts and sink him ever deeper in debt.
The boy resents Charlie for abandoning him and his mother years before, but after the mom dies, the kid turns up, adopts Atom, and pressures his old man to convert the dinged-up bag of bolts into a contender.
We know how this will turn out – we’ve all seen “Rocky” a time or 2,000. Daddy’s heart will melt, redemption will result, father and son will bond like crazy, and thousands will cheer themselves hoarse as big fists fly furiously in the inevitable climactic fight.
Your ears will ring for a week afterward from the din. ‘Real Steel’
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Cast: Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly and Anthony Mackie
Director: Shawn Levy
Running time: 2:06
Rating: PG-13; language, robot-bopping violence
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