Real Steel

Real Steel
With Transformers 3 being one of the largest grossing movies of the summer, it is clear that people are willing to pay good money to watch robots slugging it out, while quality films such as The Fighter received plenty of critical accolades but nowhere near the audience numbers.

This, to a certain extent, is the premise behind Real Steel: people would rather watch machines slugging it out rather than real pugilists.

Real Steel
Set in a not-too-distant future robot boxing is the sport of choice, whether it is dodgy backstreet fights or massive televised arena events, and Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is on the periphery of both those worlds. Kenton is an old-school boxer forced into retirement by the new “sport” and spends most of his time on the road with his robotic contenders, looking for bouts and dodging creditors and gambling debts.

When circumstances throw him together with his long-estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo), the tech-savvy offspring teaches his dad a thing or two about robots when they find an abandoned old sparring robot and take it on the road with them in the hope of challenging the mega-corporation backed, undefeated champion.

Real Steel
What you basically have is a mixture of The Champ and Karate Kid, with robots. It is cliched and predictable, with plenty of Hollywood exploitative sentimentality, and yet, despite all that, it is very entertaining.

This is primarily thanks to Jackman’s onscreen charisma, as well as the relationship he has with his young co-star. It is pretty much their movie, robots aside, relegating their other co-stars to fairly peripheral characters.

Evangeline Lilly plays the love interest, dishing out plenty of home-spun advice. Support comes from the familiar faces of Hope Davies and James Rebhorn as the boy’s aunt and uncle, but the excellent Anthony Mackie and Kevin Durand are woefully underused as ancillary characters.

Real Steel

For anyone who has enjoyed any of the countless underdog fight movies over the decades (Rocky, Karate Kid, JCVD early films) and who likes blockbuster sci-fi films, then this ticks all the boxes (especially if you are a young boy), and as cheesy as it is you can’t but help enjoying the spectacle right down to the obvious ending.

Real Steel is in cinemas and IMAX from 14 October.

We have three pairs of tickets to see the film at the BFI IMAX, London, plus a Real Steel duffel bag for one lucky person. Click below to enter the competition

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