Reel Steal

It's a Hugh Jackman movie where he gets to dealing with fighting and CGI creations... and it's not X-men!

To quote the movie summary from the Readings website: A future-set story where robot boxing is a popular sport and centered on a struggling promoter (Jackman) who thinks he's found a champion in a discarded robot. During his hopeful rise to the top, he also discovers he has an 11-year-old son who wants to know his father.

Scanning... struggling promoter... 11-year-old son... yeah, I think we can see where this movie is going. And to be honest, this movie didn't see a predictable movie plot point it didn't like. All too often I was predicting what was going to happen... and there it was!

Fortunately, there is robot fighting! Because movies about human boxers just end up with the unpleasant sight of two thugs beating the crap out of each other, so let's show robots beating the fluid out of each other! And the fights are good. To be honest, if someone said "Yeah, we built those robots, and they really did that"... well, I wouldn't believe them, but this movie does make one wish it was true.

Hugh Jackman gets it easy in this movie as a deadbeat dad. Because he isn't all that deadbeat. He strikes up an immediately nice (if dickish) relationship with Dakota Goya. And there's Evangeline Lilly to round out the family unit. Yes, there's the predictable moment where that predictable plot point happens, but he spins around so quickly you would hardly believe they bothered. (And the other star of the movie is... product placement! Just count the occurrences!)

Watch this movie for the enjoyable robot fighting. Miss it for everything else.

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