'Real Steel' with Hugh Jackman: Clumsy, would-be blockbuster

Set in a future when boxing robots have replaced humans in the ring, "Real Steel" stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a hard-luck trainer who breaks into a junkyard to assemble a contender. That's what this movie does as well, stealing the chassis from "Rocky," a cog from "The Champ" and soldering together nearly every movie 'bot in history to create a clanking, clumsy, would-be blockbuster.

"Real Steel" centers on Charlie, a former heavyweight now eking out a living entering radio-controlled robots in small-town bouts. Periodically, he visits the gym-turned-garage of Bailey (Evangeline Lilly) for a tuneup, so to speak. When his estranged 11-year-old son, Max (Dakota Goyo), suddenly shows up, the nomadic Charlie reluctantly takes the kid on the road.

In that aforementioned junkyard, Max discovers Atom, a rusty sparring model who makes fond whirring noises and shadows the boy with puppyish devotion. When this iron palooka gets in the ring, however, he's a winner. Soon, Atom will take on world champ Zeus, a foreign menace designed by an inscrutable Asian (Karl Yune) and owned by a Russian ice queen (Olga Fonda). To beat this highly advanced machine, Charlie may have to use his old-fashioned boxing skills.

Director Shawn Levy's movie flashes and clangs like a pummeled pinball machine, drowning out even Jackman's appealingly high-watt performance.

Loosely based on a Richard Matheson short story (which became a memorable 1963 episode of "The Twilight Zone" with Lee Marvin), "Real Steel" is a thematic mess as well. Are we rooting for humans over machines? Older robots over newer models? America over a Russo-Asian alliance? And let's be honest: What's so exciting about boxing robots? In the end, "Real Steel" is yet another expensive Hollywood lemon.