This week’s Blu-ray pick of the week is the Hugh Jackman-starring, father-son bonding, robot-fighting flick, Real Steel. I know, I know, “Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots: The Movie!”, but hear me out before you turn your nose up.

Some friends and I went to see Real Steel in theaters expecting a sort of action flick with tons of giant robots fighting and plenty of the charming Hugh Jackman to boot. What we got instead was a surprisingly heart-felt film with less robot boxing than what may have been portrayed in any trailer or commercial for it.

Real Steel follows the story of Charlie (Jackman) who once was a great boxer, but now carts around a fighting robot to various underground venues, making bad bets and enemies along the way. Human vs. human boxing has all but been over-shadowed by the ridiculously popular robot boxing, and Charlie tries to carve out a living with his bot outside of the professional arenas. Aided by his friend/love interest/mechanic, Bailey (Evangeline Lily), Charlie is barely making ends meet and owes a lot of dangerous people a lot of money. It’s not long before Charlie’s estranged son, Max (Dakota Goyo), enters the picture through a tragic chain of events that will, of course, affect Charlie’s life in some incredible ways. Once Charlie and Max find a sparring robot they dub Atom the two really start to bond, and given the setting this actually works very well. Max has all the faith in the world that his smaller-by-comparison robot can compete with any other boxing bot out there, and as he learns more about his father, begins to have that same faith in him as well.

We’ve seen this type of father-son-bonding story before in superior films (Rocky Balboa anyone?), but director Shawn Levy executes a film that has a lot of heart and somehow manages to avoid becoming too unbelievable or cheesy despite one of the main focuses being 10-foot-plus tall boxing robots. Also, there are fighting 10-foot-plus tall boxing robots. While there may be far less robot fighting than one may expect to see, there is -in my opinion- the perfect amount to balance out the action and family drama. The robot bouts are exciting and well rendered, and unlike the Transformers films, easy to follow.

Going into Real Steel I never expected to like it as much as I did. I was expecting more of an action and popcorn flick with plenty of robot fighting to entertain me for a few hours; what I got instead was a surprisingly touching, decently acted and scripted film with the bonus of awesome fighting robots. I never expected to be making a recommendation such as this, but I’m telling you: Check out Real Steel, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Special Features:

Four featurettes:

Countdown to the Fight: The Charlie Kenton Story

Sugar Ray Leonard: Cornerman’s Champ

Making of Metal Valley

Building the Bots

Deleted and extended scenes:

Extended “Meet Ambush”

Deleted “Butterfly” Storyline

Bloopers

Audio commentary with director, Shawn Levy

Real Steel is available on Blu-ray and DVD today, you can pick it up over at Amazon.com!