Boxing is dead. Long live boxing. Or, actually, long live robots punching each other into scrap metal while Hugh Jackman does his best impression of a man who should be less likable than he is. That’s the premise at the heart of Real Steel, and if it sounds absurd, you’re not wrong. But here’s the twist: Ocean and Jim spend ninety minutes proving that absurdity, when executed with enough chutzpah, heart, and spare robot parts, sometimes works out just fine.
This week, Ocean Murff (forever the Adam to Jim Pullen’s Max, or vice versa—good luck keeping it straight) pick apart Real Steel with the unflinching eye of two guys who know exactly how sports movies manipulate us—and still find themselves getting a little misty when the underdog robot takes one on the chin. Or the servo. Or whatever robots have.
They start, naturally, with UFC nostalgia and the eternal debate: is it still a sport if no one’s bleeding? From there, it’s a hop, skip, and full-body mirroring routine to the movie’s big question: why does a film about robot boxing make you care about broken people? Is it just Jackman’s “Wolverine effect”—no matter how many bad decisions he makes, you still want to root for him? Or is it something more elemental, buried in the scrapheap of every father-son sports movie ever made?
Ocean, who sees a little too much dignity in a dented robot’s gaze, wonders if Real Steel is really the story of Adam, the world’s most underappreciated sparring bot, finally getting his shot at the title. Jim, ever the pragmatist, roots for the kid to sell his dad on the radical notion that he’s worth sticking around for. Somehow, everyone ends up caring about a metal man with no lines and a child who refuses to be left at the gym.
They detour into essential but unanswerable questions: How does Bailey’s gym stay open if no one ever shows up? Why does Aunt Debra, the only functional adult, get painted as a villain? And exactly how illegal is robot-fighting-betting if Anthony Mackie’s character runs the book in broad daylight?
Somehow, none of this derails the central thesis: Real Steel shouldn’t work, and yet it lands—if not a knockout, then at least a split decision that’ll keep you watching until the final bell. You’ll care about the robots. You’ll care about the kid. You’ll even care about Hugh Jackman’s comeback arc, despite every screenwriting trick you can see coming a mile away.
Is this the next great sports movie? Ocean and Jim aren’t here to answer that. But they’ll make you believe that somewhere, in a gym that should be bankrupt, a robot named Adam is still dreaming of a title shot.
Listen. Disagree. Then admit you got a little choked up, too.
