Real Steel (Three-Disc Combo: Blu-ray/DVD + Digital Copy)
Description:
Enter the not-so-distant future where boxing has gone high-tech - 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots have taken over the ring. Starring Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter turned small-time promoter, Real Steel is a riveting, white-knuckle action ride that will leave you cheering. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son (Dakota Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the thrill-packed arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback. Visually stunning and complete with knockout bonus material, Real Steel is a pulse-pounding, inspirational adventure filled with heart and soul.
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18 of 19 found the following review helpful:
Terrific , action filled movieJan 19, 2012
By Linda Breen I took my grandson to see this movie. Wondering how much I was going to hate this "transformer" type movie. I had already spend years on transformer toys with his dad.Being his grandmother I also wondered how much fun it would be for him. Well it was nothing like transformers. It was so much better. My grandson was up and down in his seat througout the whole movie and we were high - fiveing in the theater. Great movie for young boys and grandma's alike.
97 of 119 found the following review helpful:
Mix Rocky with Paper Moon, add in robots, and voila! A really fun, highly enjoyable hit of a movieOct 13, 2011
By Whitt Patrick Pond
"Whitt"
Real Steel, directed by Shawn Levy, is one of the very few movies I've seen in recent years where the audience I was in actually broke into applause in various scenes. A masterfully done tale of underdogs - a boy and his dad and a discarded robot - going against the odds, it really does get you pumped up to that level. I got a bigger kick out of this movie than I have from any other this year. It really is that much fun to watch.
The germ idea for Real Steel comes from a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson that was made into a classic Twilight Zone episode, and the look is right out of the Transformers franchise, but the heart - and there's a lot of it in this film - comes in equal measure from two films one would ordinarily have never linked together: John Avildsen's boxing classic Rocky (1976) and Peter Bogdanovich's Depression-era con-man & kid road trip classic Paper Moon (1973).
The plot is set in the not so distant future of 2020, where human boxing has been completely displaced by robot boxing. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), a former boxer who now gets by "managing" a robot boxer named Ambush, is about as down on his luck as it gets. Deep in debt and barely able to keep Ambush functional, Charlie is reduced to working the fringes of the boxing circuit and even exhibiting Ambush in county fairs where he puts the robot up against things like wild bulls. Which turns out to be a really bad idea when Ambush ends up getting smashed to pieces by a bull that weighs almost three times what he had agreed to, leaving Charlie fleeing in his van afterwards to avoid the exhibition promoter (Kevin Durand) to whom he now owes twenty thousand dollars. In this opening scene, we learn two things that tell us why Charlie is in the straits he's in: (1) he frequently makes really bad decisions, especially when he's desperate, and (2) he lets himself get distracted instead of keeping his mind on what he's doing - a bad thing to have happen when your robot is fighting a two-and-a-half ton bull.
Shortly after this disaster, while wondering how he's going to be able to afford another robot, Charlie unexpectedly finds out that an old ex-girlfriend of his has died, leaving behind an eleven-year-old boy named Max (Dakota Goyo), a son Charlie hasn't seen since he was an infant. Thinking that it's just a matter of signing over custody to the boy's aunt Debra (Hope Davis) and her new husband Marvin (James Rebhorn), Charlie shows up at the courthouse, only to quickly realize that Marvin is rich and that the opportunity he's been needing has landed right in his lap. Abruptly seeming to change his mind about signing the boy over, Charlie privately talks Marvin into an agreement where he'll give up custody rights to the boy, but only for $100K. Not wild about adopting Max to begin with, Marvin grudgingly agrees, but only on the condition that Charlie keep the boy for the next three months so that the kid doesn't interfere with his plans for their summer vacation in Europe. Charlie, not wild about being saddled with a kid, reluctantly agrees, getting half the money up front, the other half to be handed over when he delivers the kid at the end of the summer. The deal done, Marvin departs with Debra, leaving Charlie face-to-face with Max for the first time. And clearly, neither of them are thrilled by this arrangement. Max is even less thrilled when he finds out that he's been "sold" to his aunt and uncle and angrily demands that Charlie give him half the money. Which Charlie can't because he's already spent most of it buying a replacement robot named Noisy Boy. Seem familiar? It's right out of Paper Moon, as are some other key moments in the film.)
Charlie takes Max to an old boxing gym that now serves largely as a repair shop for robot boxers, run by his friend Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lily). The two of them have history together as Bailey's father was Max's trainer back in the days when Max was a boxer and the boxing gym was still a boxing gym. Bailey knows Max better than he knows himself, and she's the first one to recognize just how much Max and Charlie are alike. But the similarities quickly come out when Noisy Boy is delivered and Max stares at the robot with fanboy adoration, rattling off a string of fight statistics that even Charlie wasn't aware of. He also turns out to know the Japanese commands needed to operate Noisy Boy from all of the video games he's played.
Things finally seem to be looking up and Charlie gets an old fight promoting friend Finn (Anthony Mackie) to get Noisy Boy on the evening's fight card at the local arena. But once again, Charlie's hopes are dashed by bad decisions and not keeping his mind on what he's doing. Faced with once again having to try to come up with a robot but with no money to pay for one, Charlie takes Max along as he night-raids a junkyard looking for robot parts. As they wander through the place in the dark and the rain, Max falls off the edge of a pit and is barely saved when he's snagged on the exposed arm of a buried junked robot. Excited over having found an entire robot, Max insists on digging him out, which Charlie wants no part of. Hours later, when the sun is finally rising, we see a worn-out and thoroughly mud-bedraggled Max hauling the recovered robot back to the van where Charlie is waiting. Max just glares at his father for a moment, then starts hitting and kicking at him in a blind, exhausted and exasperated fury. The scene is absolutely priceless.
Back at the gym, Max sets about cleaning up the salvaged robot, an older-gen sparring `bot built to take massive punishment but not to deal it out. He discovers that the `bot is named Atom, and that Atom has a shadow mode where he copies the movements of whoever is operating him. Max, convinced that Atom can take on actual boxer robots and win, pesters Charlie until Charlie finally arranges for Atom to get a match in an unsanctioned off-the-grid makeshift outdoor arena. In spite of himself, Charlie gets caught up in Max's dogged determination and enthusiasm and the two begin working together. From there on, the film shifts into Rocky mode and its Charlie and Max and their underdog robot Atom going up against the odds.
The supporting cast is superb. Evangeline Lilly's Bailey is quite convincing as a woman who knows Charlie well enough to care about him but to be wary of him at the same time. The same holds true for Anthony Mackie's Finn, who lets Charlie talk him into match-ups that he knows are a bad bet but he can't prevent from happening. Kevin Durand's Ricky is affably ruthless as a "good ol' boy" promoter who gets Charlie in hock and then takes it out of his hide later. John Gatins (who wrote the screenplay) brings over-the-top trash-talk bravado to his pierced and mohawked Kingpin, the manager of the robot Atom is first put up against. And Karl Yune and Olga Fonda are pitch perfect as Tak Mashido and Farra Lemkova, the arrogant brains and ice-cold business savvy behind the reigning World Robot Boxing League champion, Zeus, the ultramodern engine of destruction that Max, Charlie and Atom must ultimately face.
And the robots themselves are impressive. Not mere CGI fabrications, twenty-six animatronic robots were created for the movie. A combination of CGI and the simul-cam motion capture technology developed for Avatar was used for the scenes where you see the robots moving independently or fighting in the ring. Each boxing robot has a distinctive look and feel tailored to suggest varying levels of sophistication and menace. Everything about Atom, on the other hand, symbolizes the underdog nature of Charlie and Max. Older generation, less sophisticated, more scarred and far less shiny, and a little smaller than most of the robots he's put up against, Atom also has soft blue-oval eyes that subtly suggest empathic connection. There's no sentience behind them, no artificial intelligence, but Atom nonetheless "sees" Max and Charlie, and in him they see themselves.
But the heavy lifting rests on the chemistry between Hugh Jackman's Charlie and Dakota Goyo's Max. Hugh Jackman's Charlie is spot on, a subtle portrayal of a man always reaching for the brass ring - and always tripping himself up before he can grab it. Jackman brings this out beautifully - you can see the desperate agony on his face each time when Charlie realizes the brass ring is slipping away from him yet again. But something nonetheless keeps Charlie going on, something inside him just won't let him quit, and Jackman brings out that side of him as well. Dakota Goyo's Max is a younger - and very possibly smarter - Charlie that life hasn't beaten down yet. He is that voice inside Charlie that won't let him give up. And in Max, Charlie finds himself all over again.
Highly, highly recommended.
37 of 44 found the following review helpful:
The best - action for husbands and a tear jerker for wivesOct 11, 2011
By Barn Technically a Sci-Fi movie, this movie is really a story of a father redeeming his relationship with a son he never knew, and of the character change that occurs in the father throughout the movie. The story is very well told, drawing you into the characters experiences, and although my wife loathes Sci-Fi movies, she loved this movie and cried during some scenes. It's got a lot action in it as well and is fun to watch. I do not watch many movies twice, but I'll be buying this movie and we'll be enjoying it repeatedly. The robot they prepare together serves as a device for a David and Goliath storyline as well. Hard to believe when reading this, but you'll be cheering for the father and son and their robot as well.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Watch it like a kidJan 26, 2012
By Grady Harp REAL STEEL is a clever movie in that it takes a video game concept (though the idea is from a short story by Richard Matheson interpreted by Jeremy Leven, Dan Gilroy and written for the screen by John Gatins), keeps intact the videogame lovers' approach to fantasy and action, and introduces some adult versions of acting out that make for a solid message.
At first the movie seems trite - a grown man, ex-boxer Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman, buff, surly and in fine acting condition) buys and sells and enters robots who perform in a circus style boxing arena where years earlier real men boxed. We soon discover that this is future-set story where robot boxing is a popular sport and centered on a struggling promoter (Jackman) who thinks he's found a champion in a discarded robot. During his hopeful rise to the top, he also discovers he has an 11-year-old son Max (Dakota Goyo), in the midst of a custody battle with Charlie's deceased wife's sister and husband (Hope Davis and James Rebhorn). Charlie, ever on the outlook to pay off his debts and find financing for buying new robots to train for boxing matches, makes a deal with the couple, and agrees to care for Max for a summer while the couple visit Europe. Max wants to know his father but on his terms. The two males are aided by the owner of Charlie's training gym - Bailey (Evangeline Lilly) - and it is her intervention that helps the two males join forces and become involved with a discarded robot, Atom, they make a champion by working together.
The tenderness of the film takes a while to settle in, but in the end it is not easy to deny that the story of a reluctant father and a self sufficient son finding that arm platform of relationship, able to endure disappointments as well as triumphs. Jackman and Goyo are a terrific team and the other cast members, especially Lilly and Anthony Mackie, are solid. Shawn Levy's direction deserves credit for pulling the whole thing together. This is not just another silly CGI flick: there is a core a beauty to the film that makes it not only entertaining but heartwarming, too. Grady Harp, January 12
14 of 20 found the following review helpful:
It's like watching a giant robot boxing video game on the movie screen...Sep 28, 2011
By freeismylife On Monday September 28, 2011, I and my son were invited to an advance screening of the new DreamWorks Pictures' movie Real Steel that was shown at the Uptown Palladium in Birmingham. MI. It turned to be one exciting film that we both enjoyed from beginning to end.
Real Steel takes place in the year 2020 where boxing is now done by robots that fight to the death. Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a washed up former fighter turned robot boxing promoter that has been down on his luck for a good while. Charlie has been trying to hit it big in robot boxing, but ends up owing large sums of money to some very dangerous people.
One day he finds out that his former girlfriend has died, leaving him as the official guardian to his 11 year old son Max (played by Dakoto Goyo), who Charlie has not seen since since Max was a baby. Max's aunt (played by Hope Davis) wants Charlie to give up custody of Max to her and her very rich husband. And Charlie sees this situation as a way to get quick cash to buy another fighting robot so that he can get out of debt.
But what Charlie does not count on is the fact that his son Max is one tough kid that shows him how to have the heart to try to win again against the odds. And Max teaches Charlie that when you do what you love, the money will come.
Real Steel is an exciting and endearing film. Even though we all knew how the story would end, we could not help cheering for Charlie as he discovers how to finally be a dad and how to finally be a winner. And Dakoto Goyo who played Max is one awesome kid actor who made everyone in the audience fall in love with him. My son likes his movies exciting and the fight scenes in Real Steel are in your face loud and graphic. It was like watching a giant robot boxing video game on the movie screen.
The most exciting part of the movie for me were the scenes that were filmed right here in Detroit. Yep, this movie contains footage and aerial shots of downtown Detroit, including Cobo Hall and the GM Renaissance Center. I was bursting with Detroit pride when I saw my city on the big screen.
Just a warning to parents that this film is rated PG-13 because of the graphic boxing violence and because it contains quite a bit of adult language.
If you like a real good underdog story that is funny, captivating and heartfelt, Real Steel delivers on all counts and will open in theaters nationwide of Friday, October 7th, 2011.
based on 225 reviews
( 225 customer reviews )
