Real Steel [Review by Haus]

Not a critically-acclaimed Aaron Sorkin baseball movie. Not the euro-cool brooding hat-tip to the tale of the Scorpion and the Frog.

No. For my grand return to the Parsinghaus stage, I choose to review Wolverine and robots that box.

It’s called Real Steel. It’s every bit as silly as its trailer suggests. And you know what? It’s actually pretty good.

In the future, you see, robots do the boxing. Humans operate them by remote control. (Aren’t robots supposed to be autonomous?) Hugh Jackman plays a washed up (human) boxer turned robot-boxing operator, and now he’s all washed up there too. He’s iteratively washed up. A nested failure.

Anyway, poor Hugh’s robots keep getting demolished, so he does a shady deal for 50 grand wherein his biological son comes to live with him for the summer (don’t ask). Predictably, the little tyke — played surprisingly well by young Torontonian Dakota Goyo — is super into robot boxing and the two form a curious partnership. Goyo then stumbles upon Atom,  a neglected “sparring bot,” in a junkyard and proceeds to rehabilitate him.

Anyone else smell a strong cup of underdog-takes-the-belt abrew here?

Sure enough, what follows is a fairly standard Rocky-esque against-all-odds ascent. (Yeah, Stevie Wonder could’ve seen that one coming. With the sound off.) Along the way Jackman learns some valuable life lessons, some robots hit each other, and people get really amped up about one or both of these things.

Rest assured: This film is stupid. It’s richly stupid, three-ply quilted stupid. Beyond the obvious (robots that… box?) this film has so many issues it’s hard to keep track. (A smattering: How are the robots powered? Why do robots built to fight look fragile and come apart so easily? Not to mention that fifty grand doesn’t buy you a championship-class car, let alone ROBOT.  Come on.) And while I don’t generally fuss too much about loose ends, this film’s abrupt close leaves whole story arcs dangling. The Japanese designer — did he build Atom or not? Is Atom more than just a remote-controlled avatar? Why did the Russian want to buy him if not? What happens to Goyo at the end? These are not spoilers. Know why? Right. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENS EITHER, and I have seen the film.

But at the same time it’s also quite clever. It plays heavily with the way we project ourselves, and in so doing either influence others or breathe life into inanimate objects. Atom doesn’t need to be sentient — he reflects both Goyo and Jackman. It’s a very human film, and not in the heavy-handed men-are-this, machines-are-that Terminator way. (Okay, maybe it’s a little heavy-handed — Atom does have a straight-up mirror function.) But this human element is enough to make the film work.

So let’s not overanalyze. Sure, it’s a semi-idiotic film. But the visuals are vibrant, and Real Steel is just so whole-hog committed to its oddball premise — and Jackman and Goyo ham it up with such total abandon — that I can’t help but cheer it. And isn’t that what a night at the movies is all about?

HAUS VERDICT: Against all odds — like, seriously — Real Steel actually gets it right.