REAL STEEL Review: Flawed But Fun, Well-intended Family Fighter

rating: 3

A bemusing film not only for its ridiculously outlandish premise but also its curious lack of a Summer release - perhaps fearing the threat of Michael Bay and his Transformers chewing at their heels - Real Steel certainly isn't a film raising the highest of expectations. However, thanks to firm direction from Shawn Levy and another confident turn from the eminently likable Hugh Jackman, this is a solid morsel of post-Summer entertainment which boasts the sweet - if at times sketchy and often quite clichéd - heart that was sorely missing from Bay's juggernaut robot franchise. Director Levy is smart to hit us with his daft concept right out of the gate; a world in which robots have replaced human boxers is largely taken as a given, explained away in a few lines of mid-film dialogue. Refreshingly, little to no time is spent on establishing a plausible mythology for this concept, and Levy's mantra seems to be that you'll either get what he's trying to do or there's no point trying to convince you otherwise with heaps of laboured exposition. Admittedly the film is, at over two hours, far too long and as such completely in spite of its young target audience. Its biggest crime is wasting too much time on a well-intended if somewhat trite family bonding plot between Jackman's slick rogue but absent father Charlie and the son he is saddled with over the Summer, Max (Dakota Goyo). In a rather complicated fashion, Charlie's dead wife's sister (Hope Davis) and her husband (James Rebhorn) have agreed to adopt the boy, but first he has to spend a few months with his real Dad he hasn't seen in years. There's also a supporting turn from the always energetic Evangeline Lilly as Bailey, a mechanic of the robots who once had a romance with Charlie and remembers the days when he would box and be trained by her father. The real attraction, of course, is the dueling bots, and on the basis of this and the Transformers franchise, Hollywood seems to have well and truly cornered the market on photo-realistic machines of destruction. They unquestionably look their best in the sun-kissed opening scenes, but even during the glossier, shinier final battle, it's still a visual marvel and well worth Academy voters considering for that Visual Effects Oscar. Satisfactory as a slick, outrageous action adventure film, Real Steel really, and surprisingly, also succeeds as a rough-around-the-edges underdog story, thanks to an unexpected level of believability in the stacked-odds stakes. Despite all of the familial sugar coating it, like any brawler worth its salt - or as is the case, bolts - has sound fight psychology; Charlie's opponents are largely nerdy techies who fight by mashing a controller like a PlayStation game-pad, while Charlie, a retired boxer from times of old, is a rare sight, an organic fighter who can fight for real, and basically, this dynamic works. For all of its impressive mechanised craft and hearty storyline, none of it would matter without convincing performances, and Hugh Jackman is especially commendable with his gleefully enthusiastic turn, making the role feel as though it couldn't suit many others. He is clearly having a great time here, and his enjoyment is absolutely infectious. As his co-star, the young Dakota Goyo tends to be a tad squeaky and annoying during those dramatic scenes of familial attention-craving, but he demonstrates affable charm as a cocky proxy brawler. The film certainly errs on the saccharine side when indulging its father-son subplot, but the effort is sweet-natured enough that it only truly becomes bothersome at the cheeseball finale, which denies agency to any prior emotional investment you might have had as the big question - will father and son be separated once again? - is nonsensically forgotten altogether. Also, Levy would have been smart to throw another fight or two into the slower first hour for the sake of the kids, but he delivers a few thrillingly choreographed ones in the second to compensate. More successful as a rock 'em, sock 'em 'Rocky with Robots' vehicle than as a potent family drama, Real Steel is a scrappy but warm-hearted film which should nevertheless appeal to just about every boy under the age of 12. Real Steel opens in the U.K. next Friday but is already on release in the U.S.