Real Steel

It's Friday! (Don't worry, no Rebecca Black video will start playing that awful song. Seriously, how bad do you have to be to destroy Friday?) Today's movie review is of the new flic Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly and some seriously cool robot combat.

The movie is set in the near-future, where boxing just wasn't brutal enough for the public. They wanted more. And, because you can add robots to just about anything and make it better, yeah. They came up with robot boxing. (Rock 'em, Sock 'em, eat your heart out)

Hugh Jackman plays a down on his luck robot trainer, who thinks entirely too much of himself for his own good. He's shown ducking people who owe him money, placing bets with money he doesn't have, and then showboating for a pretty girl instead of paying attention while his robot gets owned in Spain's greatest sport, that of bullfighting.

As if that's not enough, we learn very soon that not only is he a deadbeat, but he is a deadbeat dad. For nine years now? Eleven. Oh. Well. Isn't that something. Doesn't even know how old his kid is.

His ex-girlfriend just died, leaving him in custody of his kid, at least until he can figure something out. But what starts as a bad relationship between father and son becomes a pretty good story about how a person can change and how long shots can sometimes pull through. And fighting robots. Did I mention fighting robots?

So, yeah, a good three and a half stars to this one. It's not amazing, and it runs a little long, but it's worth seeing, if for no other reason than that there are fighting robots! Seriously though, it's a good story, and one that you won't regret seeing.