REAL STEEL – Review

‘Real Steel‘ has passion, ambition, sadness, excitement and adrenaline (shall I carry on?). It’s packed many scenes that will bring every emotion a human being can produce into action. Director Shawn Levy labelled the potential of this film as a “badass spectacle”.

Starring:

Hugh Jackman – Charlie Kenton
Dakota Goyo – Max Kenton
Evangeline Lilly – Bailey Tallet
Kevin Durand – Ricky
Hope Davis – Debra
James Rebhorn – Marvin
 

Directed by:
Shawn Levy

Written by:
Dan Gilroy

Shawn Levy (‘The Pink Panther‘, ‘Night at the Museum‘, ‘Date Night‘) brings you the robot film of the year! This thrilling Bot Boxing movie, which I believe is the robot version of ‘Rocky 1‘, really lives up to one of it’s movie slogans – “Champions are not born, they are made”.

Charlie Kenton (Jackman) is a former boxer who now attempts to make his living by trying to survive in the world of Bot Boxing. A transition that is not going too well as he gets involved in bets and competitions that don’t go his way, which causes him to start owing money to one of the fight organisers called Ricky (Durand) – $20,000 to be precise!

But the story really begins when Charlie gets reunited with his estranged son Max (Goyo) after he is informed of his ex-girlfriend’s death and is called to a meeting to decide who gets custody of his son. Either him or Max’s Aunt Debra (Hope Davis) and her wealthy husband Marvin (James Rebhorn).
 

Having never spend time with his son before Charlie decides to sign the custody over to Debra but not without striking a secret deal with Marvin first, by asking for $100,000 in exchange for the custody of Max and looking after him for 3 months while Debra and Marvin are on holiday.

And from the moment Max is dropped off at Charlie’s the tension between father and son begins to show, but in a humorous way. This tension begins to change after Charlie breaks in with Max into a junkyard to steal parts to repair his brand new robot (acquired with part of the money from the custody exchange), which just got destroyed in another fight that went wrong. Max accidentally finds an old generation robot and decides to take the robot with him and an exciting and thrilling story of turning an old robot into a bot boxing champion and a father trying to prove he is worthy to be a dad begins.
 

As mentioned previously this movie truly brings every human emotion into action, especially through the way Levy portrays the warm and humorous father and son relationship and seeing a robot become a boxer.

This movie is a very good watch and a film for every boxing fan, it definitely made me want to get my boxing gloves out.

Jab, jab, uppercut!

 

Review by George Boateng