Shadowing The Moves: Real Steel

One-line review: A futuristic version of Over The Top meets Rocky VI meets Short Circuit.

Charlie (Hugh Jackman) is a down-and-out, ex-professional boxer who almost made it to the big time – having lasted the rounds with the second-best boxer in the world. Now a robot-boxer owner, he participates in unsanctioned tournaments with mechanical monsters that slug their way in strongly reinforced rings. When his ex-girlfriend dies, he is united with his 11-year-old son Max (Dakota Goyo). Being irresponsible, he decides to ‘sell’ his paternal rights over to his sister-in-law, on condition that he cares for his son for two months while his son’s wealthy future, foster parents go on vacation.

What follows is their struggle to reconcile their bloodline differences, with their love for boxing. His son finds a sparring robot, Atom during a near-death accident in a decommissioned robot junkyard; he restores it to operational readiness. Atom is a sparing robot (which can take massive blows to its body) and shadow boxer, and obeys every minute movement that his operator makes. With his father’s girlfriend, Bailley’s (Evangeline Lilly from television series, Lost) help, he restores and reprograms Atom into a reputable boxer. In the final fight against the reigning fighting robot champion (Zeus), Atom and Charlie will be tested – man and machine – for proof of their worth.

Australian, Hugh Jackman proves again why he is a rugged action-star, playing characters as diverse as Wolverine to a cattle wrangler (in Australia) to computer hacker (Swordfish). Real Steel is based on a 1956 story written by Richard Matheson. The film used animatronics and motion-capture technology for the combating robots. The final fight scene is the icing on the cake for this 127-minute story, with the muscular Jackman shadow boxing along with his mechanical counterpart.

Overall, I found the film to be fun and feel good with enough action, humour and a decent storyline. I give it a 3.5/5 rating.