Angela Oct 15, 2011
So after being wooed by that trailer, I felt an obligation to see if Real Steel was the real deal. Director Shawn Levy has been hit and miss for me over the years. I liked the first Night at the Museum well enough, but couldn't stand its sequel. His last project Date Night was something of a misfire, but here, he's created a commercial product that hits every intended mark with sure-handed confidence.
Real Steel's biggest strength is its accessibility. There's plenty of differing genres that make up this cinematic stew -- sci-fi robots, character bonding road trip, and spectacle sports fighting being the key ingredients -- and they're all marinated in an easy to digest, made-for-families style broth. If my audience from last night serves as any sort of barometer, then I'd say the movie makers are gonna be successful in capturing large demographics; there were movie-goers of all sorts and ages, and their reactions to the film were the very definition of the phrase "crowd pleaser." It's easy to see why: the fights are rousing, the comedic bantering between Jackman and Dakota Goye is actually funny, and the genuinely touching moments are exactly that.
Jackman wears his patented "asshole" role here proudly, but it's made doubly effective because he's being touted as such in a family film. His Charlie pretty much treats newfound son Max like dirt, but Goyo plays well against Jackman, standing toe to toe as the reciprocating half of this prickly father/son relationship. There's a few moments of clunky dialogue here and there, and while the sentimentality is unabashedly heavy-handed toward the end, the emotional pay-off works well enough in spite of what comes before it.
Did I mention how beautifully shot the film is? From the warm tones of heartland America (my favorite is the state fair at the beginning), to a precariously littered scrapyard during a thunderstorm at night, and the spacious, kinetically-charged arena for the final fight, Real Steel boasts some of the best principle photography I've seen in a live-action movie this year. The robots are well conceived, a great blend of practical animatronic props and motion-capture CG. Backed by the consultancy of Sugar Ray Leonard, the boxin' bots all look good doing their thing in the ring.
Danny Elfman's score is a progressive blend of acoustics, electronics, and orchestra. Some of the acoustic stuff sounds highly derivative of his past works (I swear there was one part lifted straight out of the "The Kingdom"), and while they're contextually pleasant sounding, these parts are ultimately forgettable. On the other hand, there's a heroically memorable main theme designated for sparring bot Atom (best exemplified in the trio of Charlie Trains Atom, People's Champion, and Final Round), and the Hollywood Studio Symphony gives this feel-good piece enough drive to leave a lasting impression.
Make no mistake, you're not going to see a whole lot in Real Steel that you haven't seen before. Whether it's paying loving homage to an entire genre of underdog, redemption-based boxing films like Rocky, The Champ, and Cinderella Man or shamelessly ripping them off is up to you to decide, but what it lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in execution.
