The makers of Real Steel had their work cut out for themselves from the outset by featuring an overly familiar father-son story with two rather unlikable central characters and set against the backdrop of robot boxing in a movie year that had already produced another edition of Transformers. Shawn Levy’s movie works in fits and starts: there’s too much borrowing from The Champ and Rocky editions I and IV, and there are no surprises at all in the overlong film, but it’s handsomely made and peopled with enough peripherally interesting characters to hold one’s attention albeit barely.
Real Steel (Blu-ray Combo Pack)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Studio: Dreamworks/Touchstone
Year: 2011
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 127 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 English; DTS-HD HR 7.1 French, Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish
Subtitles: SDH, French, Spanish
Region: A-B-C
MSRP: $ 39.99
Release Date: January 24, 2012
Review Date: January 16, 2012
The Film
3/5
Former boxer Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) hung up his gloves years ago when professional prizefighting began to fade in general interest. Now in 2020, he’s a scrappy survivor acting as a trainer plugging away for the low end money with his robot boxer Ambush. When his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo) loses his mother, his sister and brother-in-law (Hope Davis, James Rebhorn) offer him $100,000 for his legal rights to Max allowing the boy to spend the summer with Charlie while they go on a business trip to Europe. Max is greatly interested in robot boxing and through a series of accidental mishaps, comes into possession of an old sparring robot named Atom which he begins to tinker with using spare parts from a succession of obliterated robots that Charlie has managed. As Atom begins winning, it earns the interest of the owner and manager (Olga Fonda, Karl Yune) of the current robot champion Zeus. They sense a groundswell of interest in the underdog robot and want to buy it, but when that doesn’t work out, the two robots are paired in a David versus Goliath match.
There’s not an original moment in the characters or plots in the John Gatins’ screenplay for the movie (at least credit for the original idea of fighting robots is given to Richard Matheson whose story “Steel” was dramatized on The Twilight Zone back in 1964 in a tale that’s far more gritty and poignant than anything on display here). Charlie is a character who’s so headstrong and stubborn that his hubris causes the loss of two of his potentially promising robots, and it’s hard to drum up much sympathy for him when he’s at his lowest point due to his monumentally bad decision-making. Max is one of the more obnoxious child characters in recent movies (one wonders why Charlie’s sister-in-law wants him so badly), and the softening of both Max and Charlie’s personas as the film runs isn’t handled with much finesse. There’s also the steadfast girl friend Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly) whose late father was once Charlie’s trainer and who now owns his gym (though how she keeps it running with no discernible clients on hand is a question never explored).
As for the climactic five round fight, it’s a clear distillation of the bouts from Rocky (the champ giving an underdog a chance at the title with the same fight scenario conclusion) and Rocky IV (the Russian connection and with the oversized, undefeated Zeus squaring off against the smaller opponent and with the crowd chanting the name of the underdog throughout). While the film runs at least fifteen minutes too long, director Shawn Levy keeps things moving well enough, but try though he might to make the various fights exciting and fun, there’s such a sense of videogame unreality to them (they were actually filmed in motion capture with actors making the choreographed fight moves) that these fights simply can’t compare to filmed fights featuring human beings who are miming taking real blows and experiencing real pain. It’s a much more visceral experience to see the fights in something like Raging Bull or more recently The Wrestler than to see these machines wailing away at one another here.
Hugh Jackman’s screen charisma and winning personality must work on overtime to make this arbitrary hardhead someone we inevitably root for. He finally gets there, but it’s a long, slow struggle. Dakota Goyo’s Max never reaches that point. True, the character has abandonment issues, but his cocky demeanor and mulish determination is never tempered with moderation through the film. Rather, he suddenly becomes a doe-eyed child whom any family would want. Still, Goyo can act well what he’s been given and holds his own with the star. Evangeline Lilly, for six years the MVP on Lost never garnering the attention or acclaim she deserved for her intense, warm, and real performance, does yeoman duty here as the girl friend on the sidelines offering support and kicks in the pants when needed. Foremost among the secondary characters who ride Charlie’s tail for his goof-ups and miscalculations are Kevin Durand as a former boxer who Charlie owes money to and Anthony Mackie as Finn, probably Charlie’s only male friend who nevertheless knows what a loose cannon he can be. Hope Davis fully convinces she wants Max for her own even if her character is pretty one-note.
Video Quality
4/5
The film has been faithfully reproduced with its 2.35:1 aspect ratio featuring 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Sharpness is the variable factor here as the film teeter-totters throughout with exceedingly sharp shots and then unfathomably slightly soft shots in the same scenes. Color can be bold and beautiful, but flesh tones sometimes take on a brownish tone that doesn’t match consistently with them elsewhere in the movie. Black levels are fine as is shadow detail. The film has been divided into 20 chapters.
Audio Quality
5/5
The film has a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track, and the sound design makes the most of every single one of them. The 7.1 channels are completely immersive and wonderfully full and rich with deep bass and lots of canny usage of the rear channels for the fight announcers during the bouts. Otherwise, dialogue is rooted to the center channel (during the bouts it's a bit hard to hear any dialogue over the tumult of the crowds) while the sometimes plaintive and sometimes rowdy music score by Danny Elfman and the hip-hop songs which dot the soundtrack get effective placement in both the fronts and rears.
Special Features
4.5/5
All of the video featurettes used in the bonus features are presented in 1080p.
“Ringside with Director Shawn Levy” is a combination audio commentary and interactive guide to the making of the film. Even without using a computer or iPad, the viewer can access this Second Screen feature in which the director enthusiastically comments on his film (sometimes in PiP windows) and sometimes veers the viewer away from the movie to viewer featurettes on various aspects of the filming. To watch the film in this mode would take easily two-and-a-half hours, but fans of the movie will likely enjoy all of the featurettes.
“Countdown to the Fight – The Charlie Kenton Story” is done as an ESPN featurette prior to the big climactic bout of the movie as the movie’s actors in character tell the story of Charlie’s boxing career and subsequent entry into the world of robot boxing. This featurette funs 15 ¾ minutes.
“Making Metal Valley” is a 14 ¼-minute feature showing the four day shoot on the Metal Valley sequence of the movie where Max discovers Atom. In addition to Shawn Levy, the movie’s production designer, special effects coordinator, and stunt coordinator discuss aspects of the filming as we watch behind-the-scenes as the various stunts are staged and shot.
“Building the Bots” features interviews with artists from Legacy Effects (the late Stan Winston’s company) who built the robots used in certain shots in the movie (the robots in the movie were a combination of real puppet automatons and CG effects). This lasts 5 ½ minutes.
“Sugar Ray Leonard: Cornerman’s Champ” is a featurette showing Sugar Ray Leonard working with star Hugh Jackman to make him into a believable former fighter. This runs 6 ¼ minutes.
There is one extended scene and one deleted set of subplot sequences which may be played individually or in one 17 ¾-minute group. Director Shawn Levy introduces each section.
The film’s blooper reel runs 2 ½ minutes.
The disc contains trailers for War Horse, The Avengers, and The Help.
The second disc in the set is the DVD copy of the movie.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
Real Steel doesn’t posit anything new to the action movie genre, but for a reasonably entertaining evening of action movie viewing, it’s not bad. The film is filled with bonus material if one has the patience to ferret it all out, and the video, while not perfect, and the superb audio certainly add to the disc’s entertainment value.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
Great review as always 
