Watching Karate Kid Makes Me Want to Do Martial Arts Again
Reviews
A faithful remake, well done
If you've seen "The Karate Kid" (1984), the memories volition come up back during this 2010 remake. That's a compliment. The original story was durable enough to inspire iii sequels, and now we accept an entertaining version filmed mostly on location in China, with 56-year-quondam Jackie Chan in the role of Mr. Miyagi.
The original was one of its twelvemonth's best movies. The new ane lacks the perfect freshness of that one; there aren't many surprises, as it follows the 1984 version almost point by betoken. But here is a lovely and well-made film that stands on its own feet. The Chinese locations add visual involvement, there are scenes of splendor in mountains and on the Great Wall, and the characters are once again engaging.
The original film's greatest asset was the Oscar-nominated functioning past Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. Jackie Chan is so famous that information technology can come up as no surprise here when his Mr. Han, a reclusive janitor, reveals a hidden talent for the martial arts. Simply Chan has never been a strutting, macho fighter onscreen; his charm comes from a self-kidding quality. Here he does a proficient task of cooling downwardly his usual cheerfulness and keeping his cards subconscious.
In the office of his young pupil, Jaden Smith, son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, has a natural screen presence. Dre Parker is calmer than the skittish kid played by Ralph Macchio, but and then much smaller than his opponents that we can well believe his fear of a nifty at schoolhouse. And when that happens, nosotros tin can forget obsessing nearly the 1984 film and enjoy this ane. That was then, this is now.
The story once once more involves a kid beingness packed upwardly by his divorced mom and forced to leave his hometown and friends and motion far abroad — from Detroit to Beijing, this time. He hates it. And then a cute young violinist named Meiying (Han Wenwen) smiles at him, and life looks more promising — if information technology weren't for the school groovy Cheng (Wang Zhenwei). This beast is so mean and sadistic, it'due south hard to explicate, until nosotros meet his vicious kung fu coach, Master Li (Yu Rongguang). The monstrous Li teaches a new form of child corruption: Kids chirapsia up on each other.
The story gain, as information technology must, with Dre slowly softening the eye of Mr. Han, who saves him from a beating by Cheng and agrees to teach him the secrets of kung fu. Preparation goes well, and Dre and Meiying make a pact to attend each other'due south large days: his kung fu tournament, her recital. There'due south the usual nonsense almost her parents disapproving of him. Gee, why in the earth would the parents of a world-class classical musician disapprove of a kung fu pupil from Detroit who doesn't speak Chinese?
Luckily for Dre and the movie, everyone in Mainland china who needs to speak English tin do so, fifty-fifty the lilliputian monster Cheng. Many Americans not but have little interest in learning another language, they have little interest in reading subtitles of their own. We believe, every bit Mark Twain put it in The Innocents Abroad, that whatsoever foreigner tin understand English if information technology is only spoken slowly enough and loudly enough.
It goes without saying that the whole movie leads up to a climactic kung fu tournament, and that Dre is pitted confronting Cheng for the championship. The lineage of the pic is distinguished; the 1984 version was directed by John Avildsen, managing director of "Rocky." This film's climax is unusually well-handled; the tension is constructed in a careful way, the characters are adult, and use of a scoreboard makes it seem orderly, not rushed. It's one of the better obligatory fight climaxes I've seen.
The director, Harald Zwart, has not been i of my favorites; he made last year's "The Pink Panther 2." But here, with a robust script past Christopher Murphey and cinematography by Roger Pratt (who filmed two "Harry Potters"), he makes a handsome, absorbing film. It runs a little long, merely during the championship, that's the concluding thing you're thinking of.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the pic critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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The Karate Kid (2010)
140 minutes
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