| 12 October 2011
I'm sure I wasn't the only person to be a little skeptical when I heard about the premise of Real Steel. In fact, go ahead and insert your Rock'em Sock'em Robots joke right here.
Still, I was fairly optimistic because I knew Sugar Ray Leonard was helping with the actual robot boxing movements. And star Hugh Jackman spent months talking the movie up. Sure, that's part of his job, but Jackman appeared to be genuinely enthusiastic, and when actors think their movies are going to bomb, they generally just don't talk about them at all.
Then reviews started coming in, and even critics who are pretty hard on movies thought Real Steel was pretty good. The premise obviously didn't bother too many people, as the flick opened at number one in the U.S. last weekend (against pretty weak competition, but still), bringing in $27.3 million in its debut.
Not too shabby, right? In fact, Box Office Mojo called it the best opening for a boxing movie ever, surpassing the $20 million that Rocky IV took in back in 1985.
I hardly ever get to the movies these days, and even though I'd love to see Real Steel, it's probably not going to happen until the movie makes its way to DVD. So here's my question to you, dear readers: Is Real Steel actually a boxing movie?
Because let's face it, we've been pretty spoiled when it comes to cinematic depictions of the sweet science. Besides the Rocky series, there's The Fighter, Million Dollar Baby, The Hurricane, even Ali. The drama and excitement of the sport, as well as its sometimes unsavory underbody, has been well represented over the years.
For what it's worth, one of my good friends saw the movie Tuesday night and sent me the following text. He's someone whose taste in pop culture is similar to mine but is not a big boxing fan:
"Yo Real Steel was <bleep>ING AWESOME... You need to see it and it really is a boxing movie."
So there's one vote for boxing movie, robots and all. Sound off in the comments if you've seen it and tell us what you think.
