Hugh Jackman is Charlie Kenton, a washed-up boxer who had a boxing career that never made it past some highlights in the news because he refused to let a fight be judged by score; win or lose, someone was going to end up on the mat. In addition to not making the big time as a boxer, boxing basically moved out from under him, as boxing became eclipsed by robo-boxing, where larger-than-life robotic boxers would wail on each other, providing more carnage and destruction than human boxers would. This shift in boxing and his devil-may-care approach has led him to a dark place in his life, as he toured county fairs and the underground fighting circuit, trying to etch out a living with his second-rate, run-down bot.
Real Steel opens on Charlie Kenton at a point when his luck had nearly bottomed out. An old rival of his, a fellow ex-boxer named Ricky (Kevin Durand, Lost) raises the stakes on the fight and, when Charlie gets distracted by a pretty girl in the stands, Charlie's bot, Ambush, gets literally ripped apart. This leaves Charlie with no bot and the need to "get out of Dodge" before Ricky comes to collect his winnings. On top of all this, some lawyers catch up with Charlie and explain that his ex-wife has died in an accident and he needs to come attend to the custody of his estranged son, Max (Dakotah Goyo). Charlie shows up in court to simply sign away any claim on the boy to his ex-wife's sister, Debra (Hope Davis) and her husband, Marvin (James Rebhorn) and to be on his way, but when he notices that Marvin is extremely rich and that Debra would do anything for this kid, Charlie attempts to extort $100,000 our of Marvin to simply walk away from custody. Marvin has his own surprising twist, however; he wants the opportunity to spend the summer in Tuscany, Italy with Debra before they take custody. Charlie arranges to give over custody, on the condition that he has the summer to "bond" with the kid a bit and pockets the 50k up-front money. Mind you, all he ever planned to do was to pawn the kid off on his girlfriend, Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly, Lost) for the summer and simply pick him up when it's time to drop him off and collect the second half of his money.
Charlie spends most of his newly found funds on a voice-controlled robo-boxer named "Noisy Boy" who had achieved some fame in the Japanese circuit, but hadn't been in the U.S. for years. Charlie takes Noisy Boy immediately to enter him in some high stakes fights and make some money, but Noisy Boy doesn't have a very successful run and the two end up broke, eating fast food and living in Charlie's bot transport truck with no bot to fight. In desperation, Charlie and son break into a humongous scrap yard known as "Metal Valley" to search for parts to build up a new fighting bot. Metal Valley is a very dangerous place, however, and when Max nearly falls to his death, he is rescued from a precipice by Charlie. Max notices that what he had gotten caught on is actually an arm of an old, discarded bot of some sort and insists that they uncover the robot and take him with them. Charlie doesn't help, but leaves Max to this task, which, that next morning, he completes, pulling a motorized cart containing his prize behind him.
Max learns a thing or two about responsibility by cleaning up and training his own robot - an old sparring robot who turns out to be named "Atom." With no other resources to speak of, Max insists that Charlie help him get Atom a fight. Charlie does so reluctantly, but Max's speed with the controls (thanks to experience in playing video games) and Charlie's boxing know-how from his boxing career coupled with a sparring bot which was specifically designed to take a hit and keep on moving not only won them their first fight, but looked like it might be a combination that could win them a lot more fights to come. Soon, Max is modifying Atom and teaching it some simple moves, using Atom's shadowboxing feature, which allows him to mimic the moves of human fighters he observes. Charlie sees Max dancing with Atom in shadowbox mode and convinces Max to work this into their act, dancing before all of their fights. This extra bit of showmanship gets them a lot of attention in the robo-boxing world and even lands them a fight in the World Robot Boxing league against Twin Cities, a two-headed robot. Their entry dance energizes the crowd and Charlie's eye for weaknesses helps them jab their way to an actual WRB victory, and Max challenges Zeus, the current WRB league champion. Publicly. Right after this fight.
After winning the Twin Cities fight, however, Ricky and some of his goons catch up with the two, beating Charlie to within an inch of his life, roughing up Max a bit and stealing not only their winnings, but all the money they had in their truck... which was all of their money, period. This fight brought them closer together, but Charlie also grew up a bit, here, and realized that he had no business taking care of Max. He contacts his wife's sister and they cut their trip short to come take custody of Max, but we see that when Marvin offers Charlie his second $50,000 payment, Charlie refuses the money. Charlie has changed, indeed. Our new Charlie returns to Bailey and realizes that in his devil-may-care romp, he made the wrong sacrifices and pushed (or threw) away people who should have mattered to him. When the public relations nightmare prompts Zeus to accept Atom's challenge, Charlie goes to ask Max for one more shot, to go win - or lose - against Zeus.
The fight makes for a climactic end to the movie, with a cutting edge technological Goliath being pitted against a under-powered robot with a human element - heart - which people hadn't seen in boxing since it became mechanized.
In addition to the Blu-ray, you also get a DVD version of the film. There are just a couple of handfuls of special features, but several of them are quite interesting. My favorite is the "Making of Metal Valley," which shows how this amazing set and the breathtaking fall were created, although several of them were very interesting, including the Sugar Ray Leonard: Cornerman's Champ featurette and the Building the Bots featurette on the hybrid approach to special effects in Real Steel and how physical models were used to lend a sense of realism and help the actors better interact with the robots in the film. Countdown To The Fight: The Charlie Kenton Story is a "background piece" on Charlie Kenton, Hugh Jackman's character in the film, which is sort of funny, since it's "in character" and is sort of a TV documentary on his boxing career. It does show the thought that went into the background behind the story, however.
There will be some people who don't like Real Steel, I'm sure, but there really is something for almost everyone in this movie. The fans of robots and science fiction will enjoy the fact that the special effects are a hybrid of CG and practical effects done by Legacy Effects, a company formed by four long-time colleagues of Stan Winston who are working to keep his legacy alive. Fans of drama will enjoy the heart-warming story of a man growing up and learning to care. Meanwhile, fans of boxing will be interested in the fact that none other than Sugar Ray Leonard served as the boxing consultant and move coordinator on the film. With the blend of CGI and practical effects, Real Steel looks great in high definition. I would highly recommend Real Steel on Blu-ray to anyone who even has a passing interest in this film.
