Real Steel (2011)

Last week I went to go see Real Steel with my friend. It had been a few weeks since my last movie adventure, so I was looking forward to being transported for a few hours into another realm. Although Real Steel was not my first choice, to be honest the previews left little desire, I was not disappointed in the end. I was actually quite surprised with this movie and truly did enjoy it. I even recommend it to a few or my co-workers who have kids.

The movie starts with Charlie (played surprising well by Hugh Jackman) driving out to BFE where he has scheduled a fight between his old robot, named Ambush, and a 800 lb bull (who actually ends up being around a 2k lb bull). We learn very quickly on that Charlie is deep financial trouble and owes at least 2 loan sharks around 30k each, this is why Charlie has agreed to this unorthodox fight between his robot and a bull. When Charlie arrives at the fight, he is outraged when he sees the 2k bull and tries to complain to manager/owner of the bull fighting ring and ex-rival Ricky (played by Kevin Durand) but Ricky tells him if he wants to get paid his robot has to fight. Realizing that he has no other option, Charlie agrees to the match. Seeing a chance to make more money from the fight, Charlie bets Ricky 10k winner takes all. Ricky laughs and agrees with a sweet reminder that if he doesn’t get his winnings he will beat Charlie within an inch of his life.

The fight begins and Ambush (Charlie) hauls off and clocks the bull, making you think that the match will be over quickly.

**Side Note – after watching him hit the poor bull, I no longer felt sorry for Charlie and the crap he was in, seriously, who hits a bull and thinks its ok. It a freaking animal! Hit a person, fine, they know what they are getting into the ring for, but a bull. Sick and as I said already, unorthodox.**

Charlie, thinking he is the shiznet, starts to flirt with some cute girls in the stand (idiot men) and the bull, pissed off after being hit by a freaking robot turns and charges the robot from behind, taking one of Ambushes legs. Charlie, now realizing that he is about to lose the fight, his robot and the money that he desperately needs in order to keep his legs tries in vain to lead Ambush to a victory on one leg, but he quickly sees his hobs dash as the bull sticks Ambush cutting the robot into two.  

Knowing he doesn’t have the money to pay Ricky, Charlie hurries to leave. Dragging the mangled remains of Ambush back to his huge-ass truck, Charlie runs into two well-dressed men who inform him that his ex-girlfriend/wife (not really sure which) has died in a car accident and his son Max (played by Dakota Goyo) according to Texas law must be turned over to his father. However, Max’s aunt (played by Hope Davis) has offered to take full custody of Max if Charlie just signs the kid over.

Having no need or desire for a little kid dragging him down, Charlie goes to sign the paperwork. While in the courtroom, he realizes that Max’s aunt is married to a VERY rich man, and Charlie makes a deal with the rich old hubby (played by James Rebhorn) to agree to sign Max over for $100,000. The rich hubby agrees on one condition…Charlie keeps Max for the summer, Charlie agrees and hubby gives Charlie 50K up front and agrees to give him the rest after the summer. Charlie, ignoring the fact that he owes multiple people large sums of money, immediately spends the first 50K buying an old champion known as Nosiy Boy and has it delivered to the gym that his ex-girlfriend/girlfriend Baliey (played by Evangeline Lilly) took over after her father (and Charlie’s old boxing coach). We soon realize that Max also has a thing for the fighting robots, and the story involves, as we all know the father will fall for his son.

Thinking he will get his money back right away, Charlie doesn’t takes Max’s or Balieys advice and work with the robot to learn his combos and fighting technique. Instead, Charlie immediately take Max (through Max bribing him to let him come along) and Nosiy Boy to flight. Thanks to Nosiy Boy’s reputation and Charlie’s relationship with the ring owner, Finn, Charlie manages to get the top fight against Midas (one bad as bot) and Charlie manages to lose everything. The flight to the death destroys Nosiy Boy in less than 24 hours.

In an attempt to recoup some of his losses, Charlie takes Max to a bot junkyard, it is a sad sight. Old robots tossed aside after being uses up, abused and discarded. While Charlie tries to score enough parts to fix up some old robot…just so he can get enough money to get a new bot, Max falls off the edge of a cliff and plummets down into the dark…robot part filled cavern below. (Good job dead beat dad for keeping an eye on your kid). Luckily for Max (and because that would have been a horrible ending to a Disney movie) his jacket is caught on the arm of a buried robot. Thrilled with his discovery, Max begs Charlie to help him recover the bot, but Charlie…selfish and a man, doesn’t see the financial gain and leaves Max to spend the night in the rain digging up the bot alone…which he does.

Max and Charlie get to the gym and surprisingly Baliey manages to get the robot rebooted and they quickly realize that although not a actually fighting bot, this generation one sparring bot has a rare(advanced for the bots time) Shadow Function. The Sparring bot was designed to help fighting bots train, it can take an insane amount of beating and can mimic (shadow) moves from the other bots to help it train, but it can’t fight itself. But this doesn’t deter Max, who is convinced that the Sparring bot…named Atom, can fight. Max is infatuated with his new bot and quickly adopts it as a friend (makes you wonder how lonely this kid must have been).

After enduring endless begging from Max, Charlie agrees to take Atom and Sam to “The Zoo” which is an underground, no-rules fighting ring for Atom’s first fight. Max, confident in Atom and ignoring Charlie completely makes a huge bet against the crazy punk rocker ring-leader for 1K, winner takes all. Unable to pass up a punk kid and a sparring bot, the ring leader takes the bet and proceeds to have his robot beat down. Max, thrilled with himself takes the money…while talking smack…and they leave. While heading out, a man comes to them and asks them if Atom would like to do another fight. We see a light at the end of the tunnel for Charlie and his financial crisis.

The next morning Max and Atom are still up for the night before.

**Side Note – Charlie has introduced Max to energy drinks and crap food and the kid is so wired on caffeine that sleep is only something Max can day dream about at this point**

Max has been trying to teach Atom how to box. But after hours of training, Max has a little fun with Atom’s shadow function and the two of them break it down (in a VERY white boy way) to Eminem (I think, I am not sure…but it was something good).

**Side Note – yes I know another one so soon, but the album to this movie is WICKED good! The music seriously was kick ass!**

Charlie at this point walks out and see the two of them dancing (white boy dancing). Charlie agrees to teach Atom to fight if Max agrees to “dance” with Atom before the fights. Max agrees.  But Max didn’t spend all night dancing, he has also taken the speech functions out of Nosiy Boy and installed them into Atom. (Seriously, this kid is a freaking electronic genius or something, because that is some pretty spiffy stuff). And so Atom begins to rise as a star, Dancing with Max before every fight and training with Charlie every day. Slowly, Charlie starts to save up money to pay off his debt  (he sends Baily passed rent with interest) and Max works to make Atom better and better. 

Max and Charlie get there first shot at the big WRB (the Robot Boxing league) when Atom is invited to fight against Twin City (an Asian Robot with two heads…one for each of the creepy twin Asian controllers). Thrilled to get into the big leagues Charlie and Max take the fight, but it is not as easy as the underground matches and Atom is beat into a corner. Charlie suddenly sees Twin City’s weakness and beats the two headed bot down!!!  Seeing his change, Max grabs the mic and challenges the #1 Bot in the World Zeus to a duel. This does not please Zeus owners.

Now Zeus is one bad as bot. There is a reason he is number one. He was designed, paid for and built to be the best fighter. He was built by Tak Mashido a retired bot designer who not only built the champion Noisy Boy, but was commissioned for one final project…Zeus. Zeus has never lost a fight; in fact no bot has ever passed the second round with Zeus. His programming (specially developed by Tak Mashido) allows him to analyze and predict bot fighting patterns makes him unstoppable. So being challenged by a little kid and a sparring bot is pretty embarrassing, and also pretty stupid on the kids side.

Upon leaving their fight with Twin City, Charlie run’s into his old buddy from the County Fair, Ricky, who beats the crap out of Charlie (as he promised he would) and steals Max’s money. Realizing the danger that he has put Max in, Charlie quickly takes Max back to his Aunt. Old hubby, pleased that Charlie kept his part of the deal, try to give him the other 50K, which Charlie refuses.

**Side Note – at this point in time, Charlie really should have just taken the money. He really needed to pay some people off, before he was just beat to an inch of his life, but beaten to death, but something about pride and what not….stupid shit, pride ain’t gonna do you a damn thing when you’re dead**

Max is pissed to be back at home, and begs Charlie to let him stay with him, but Charlie refuses…seeing the error of his ways and so on J

Some time passes and all of a sudden a message comes down from Mount Olympus, Zeus has agreed to the fight. Unbelieving, Charlie rushes to Max. He apologizes (in a very bad way) to Max’s aunt and asks if Max can come for one night as Atom v/s Zeus. She reluctantly agrees.  

Max and Charlie are so ready, but before the fight, the get an invitation to Mount Olympus. Zeus hot ass owner tries to buy Atom from Max and Charlie for 200K (or some huge number), Charlie ready to leap at this chance, Max refuse, truly believing that Atom has a chance against the god of gods.

The bell rings, and no one expect Atom to even survive the first round with Zeus and bets are flying. We see Ricky go and make a bet 5 to 1 against with Charlie’s old buddy, Finn. But instead of making the bet and leaving, Ricky proceeds to be a racist dick to Finn.  

**Side Note – I just wanted to reach into the screen and strangle Ricky…such a prat?**

Atom is almost KO’d by Zeus as soon as the bell rings. But Atom struggles up and continues to fight again and again being knocked down by the god, but surprising everyone Atom makes it past the first and second and third round. By the fourth round everyone is surprised that this little sparring bot is holding his own against Zeus. Both bots are taking some amazing hits. The crowed is seriously going wild, you see both Max’s aunt and uncle and Baily in the crowd. Suddenly Atoms voice recognition software gets destroyed by one enormous blow from Zeus. Just then the bell rings….end of the fourth round.  Realizing that they can no longer tell Atom what to do, the only way to continue and complete the fight is for Atom to shadow box with Charlie. Max changes out the programing quickly and the last round begins. Charlie begins to fight, and the shadow boxing is allowing Atom to move faster than before and new non-standard bot moves that Charlie has taught Atom through their time together. Atom backed into a corner takes a heavy heavy beating from Zeus. Max screams at Charlie to do something, but Charlie has seen Zeus weak spot and is waiting for his moment. Meanwhile, all is not calm on Mount Olympus, Zeus is overloading, and about to crash. Tak is freaking out, seeing his bot about to crash in the middle of the most wildly watched bot fight in the world. He runs down and takes control of the robot himself…and this is not missed by the reporters. Who zoom the cameras in on Tak pushing the controllers out of the way and taking the seat himself. But Charlie is in the rhythm fighting Zeus alongside Atom. The crowd is going wild. Charlie starts to back Zeus into a corner, about to deliver the final blow to the god when the bell rings. Ending the final round. The crowd has already decided who has won the match, but as the judges votes are announced, it is clear that Zeus won (by a hair)…(I think Mount Olympus may have paid off the judges) but no one cares about the Judges choice, the reporters flood pass Tak and Zeus to Atom, Max and Charlie. The people have spoken, Atom gets the title of “The People’s Champion” and that is good enough for Max.

 

Can I just say, I was extremely hesitant to go to this movie originally, but the story, the graphics, the music, it ended up being a great movie. Regardless of if you have kids or not, this movie is worth seeing. I seriously clapped in the theater (admittedly I may have been the only one, but I clapped…everyone else was just lame). This movie moved me and I really truly enjoyed it. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth seeing go watch it, rent it, whatever, but definitely check it out.