Real Steel ***

A movie for, about, and made by emotional eleven-year-old boys, "Real Steel" brings a robot video fighting game to over-sized life. The special effects are spectacular, with giant robots seen in the round inhabiting a world with humans. And with the violence of boxing transferred to machines, the fans in this world of the near future are free to cheer the mayhem in the ring, as is the present-day theater audience, without the nagging thought that they are participating in something barbarous.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, an ex-boxer turned robot fight promoter, a man who was almost at the top when the game changed. Driving a huge rig with his mechanical fighter as cargo, he goes from one small venue to the next looking for that one win that will turn everything around. At this point his son Max (a feisty Dakota Goyo) appears when his ex-wife dies. Max is just another game piece for Charlie, but circumstances throw them together for a summer, and something starts to click.

The build-up is Rocky-esque, and the fighting is straight out of transformers. The story is thin and the emotions thinner. If you can take an eleven year old, or you want to revisit that time of your life, you'll enjoy this movie, which does manage to create a convincing video game life set in the trappings of American big time sports.