Movie Review: Real Steel

Sometime in the future, the new sport of robot fighting has become very popular. Hugh Jackman plays a former boxer who now operates the robot fighters. At the beginning of the story, Jackman's character, Charlie, takes temporary custody of his estranged eleven year old son, Max, and this is basically the main storyline of the film.

The two spend the movie bonding over an old beat up robot the boy found in the junkyard. I'm not really sure how to describe the robots, but they were really interesting looking and differed completely. We saw some robots that looked like spare parts put together and other robots that looked like a million bucks. It really helped to push the whole "underdog" image of Atom, the robot Max saved and rebuilt.

The relationship between Charlie and Max was really cute and the actor playing Max was perfectly cast. He was able to portray a sassy, tough guy and an adorable, everyone loves him, little boy.

It really amazed me how a robot with no facial expressions was still able to portray emotions. While we first saw robots stealing the show in Wall*e, Real Steel used basic movements and amazing music to portray the robots excitement and heartbreak. The robots were created using CGI imaging and motion capturing cameras which gave them very human movements while looking the size of a truck. Unlike other recent robot movies (Transformers) these robots could not think or feel. They were remote operated and followed their programing.

My personal opinion of this film is that this was a real underdog story, but this time the underdog was a robot. I loved watching the developing relationships between all the characters and thought they were well casted.

Real Steel will be released nation wide on October 7, 2011. Yahoo! Movies is still offering free popcorn so check it out before you head to the movies.

Movie Rating for Real Steel

The passes for this pre-screening were won through 43KIXPhilly. Follow their Facebook page to attend free screenings near you. Check out my information post for more information about free movie screenings.