Real Steel

It’s a family-friendly cobbling of all the boxing movies, with, ya know, robots. There’s lots of Rocky, plenty of The Champ, a little bit of Raging Bull, and some recognizable stuff from the robot greats: Wall-E, Short Circuit, Robocop. So it’s about as original as a Big Mac. But I got a kick out of it, mainly because of the adults: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Hope Davis and James Rebhorn. I think it’s the sign of a good actor when they can take a script as corny and derivative as this and commit whole-heartedly to its reality. Never winking, never tongue in cheek. The exception to this: the villains. I laughed out loud every time the wicked, Russian, robot-owning vixen spoke. She made me nostalgic for Brigitte Nielsen. Anyway, I went into this expecting a movie about boxing robots. My expectations were fulfilled.