iRocky

Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Stegall
Real Steel
Directed by Shawn Levy
Screenplay by John Gatins, story by Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven
From the story “Steel” by Richard Matheson
Starring Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, and Dakota Goyo
It takes chutzpah, and a lot of screen presence, to steal a movie out from under Wolverine. In Real Steel, young Dakota Goyo (Thor, Rise of the Guardians) manages to do just that, aided by an age-bending script and a story that continues to fascinate long after its first introduction. Much has been said about this movie’s resemblance to Rocky, the iconic underdog movie about a failed boxer who gets one last shot at glory. To a lesser extent, there have been plenty of comparisons to the Transformers movies, although I’m not seeing much resemblance as to plot and story. For me, the closest relative to Real Steel is a different Jon Voight vehicle, The Champ (1979), in which Voight played a has-been boxer who, for the love of his son, takes the comeback trail. Like Voight’s character, Hugh Jackman’s Charlie has a long way to go.
Richard Matheson originally wrote “Steel” for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1956. The story of an ex-boxer who now manages a boxing robot, after human boxing is outlawed, it probes the desperation of a man down on his luck, with no options, who risks his life against a machine. In 1963, the story was adapted for The Twilight Zone, starring Lee Marvin as the ex-boxer. As a story, it’s compelling enough, but when adapted to the screen, young Max was added, and the entire focus of the story changed. A much stronger, warmer, and more engaging story emerges, in which solid performances by the actors balance out the tendency for the movie to look like the video games Max so adores. All too often, the special effects in a movie like this can overwhelm the rest of the plot, but in Real Steel the weight of the story is all on young Max’s shoulders. And Dakota Goyo carries it all with ease, composure, and the self-possession of a pro.
The story is as old and as simple as David and Goliath, and evokes overtones of every story written since the Industrial Revolution started replacing human workers with machines. In this near-future story, human boxing has been outlawed, throwing former up-and-comer Charlie Kenton (Jackman) out of work. He now scuttles around the edges of the bright world of professional robo-boxing, managing a beat-up boxing robot and ignoring his ten-year-old son, his best girl Bailey (Lilly) and the many people whom he owes money to. These all crash in on him at once when his robot is trashed by an actual living bull, his creditors start to get nasty, and his son’s mother dies, leaving him with custody. The end result of some fuzzy courtroom bargaining leaves Charlie with summer custody of Max (Goyo) and they take to the road, as Charlie schemes to make some money out of this arrangement and get back into a game he doesn’t even realize he’s lost.
From the moment he steps onscreen, young Dakota Goyo owns it. Snarky, funny, and wise beyond the years of anyone onscreen, he’s a thirty-year-old computer whiz in a ten-year-old suit. Goyo shows us the vulnerable kid under the cynical shell, the kid who wants a father but doesn’t want this Charlie, a child on the edge of adolescence longing to prove himself. But to prove himself, he must prove his father worthy of that effort as well, so while Charlie searches for some robot that will hold together long enough to get into a fight, Max searches for some way to hold on to Charlie and what Charlie used to be. Or what he wants Charlie to have used to be. The script is thin on Charlie’s backstory, but it’s not important anyhow. What counts for us is that Charlie slowly grows to see himself in the boy, finally confronts his own inadequacy, and cannot stand what he sees in the mirror. He doesn’t know what to do about it, but that’s okay. Max does.
Real Steel reverses the usual age roles. Charlie, though possessed of Hugh Jackman’s impressive physique, is very much the immature boy-man. He is rash, irresponsible, impulsive. Max is sober, smart, and mature. He’s the one who rescues a sparring robot called Atom from a scrap heap, sees as much potential in Atom as he does in Charlie, and rehabilitates them both. The plot is simple enough, pitting Atom against the world’s most feared robot, Zeus, and the final match is exciting and, you should pardon the pun, hard-hitting. I didn’t expect to be drawn in very much by a match-up between two machines. I was surprised to find myself on the edge of my seat, cheering. Director Levy connects Max and Charlie to one another and to Atom in an organic and seamless relationship, one that makes Atom as much a personality as any of the flesh-and-blood characters onscreen. Unlike the mindless collections of metal that made up Transformers, the robots in Real Steel are at least as individual and relatable as R2-D2.
A word on the technical aspects: I have never seen animatronics this seamless onscreen. The robots walked, stalked, jumped, and fought alongside real-life actors and looked as present, real, and convincing as Jackman, Lilly, or Goyo themselves. I was only aware that they were not real when these huge ‘bots went around swinging their huge steel arms near humans; one blow from Zeus would have killed a human being. I flinched every time I saw Max walking around with a robot that could have crushed him like a bug. Otherwise, however, the robots meshed flawlessly with the rest of the cast.
So we have a mix of David versus Goliath, Transformers, and every father/son bonding movie ever made, with a little paranoia about foreigners thrown in (the bad guys are Japanese and Russian, respectively). We get a vast homage to the X-Box generation, with their mad gaming skillz, and a glancing blow at the plight of displaced workers (or boxers). Mostly, we get a good story about a man’s redemption and the love of his son, a story that never grows old. Altogether, this was a fun, heartwarming, and exciting two hours, much better than I expected. I highly recommend it. Just don’t look for a lot of subtlety; the script, like the ‘bots, comes on like a ton of lead bricks.