THE KARATE KID (2010) — Movie Review
By John Argote Rodriguez
ROAD TO COBRA KAI
“The Karate Kid” was released on June 11, 2010 and is a loose remake of the original 1984. “The Karate Kid” stars Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan and is about 12 year old Dre (Smith) moving with his mom from Detroit to Beijing, China where he gets into trouble with the local bully until he meets Mr. Han (Chan) who teaches him kung fu … not karate … the movie’s called “The KARATE Kid”.
Right off the bat this movie’s plot is similar to the original, but makes some drastic changes, the first being that there isn’t karate it’s kung fu, and our main character is a 12 year old not a teenager, and different location, the first film the main character moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, the other side of the country which is extremely far, but in this our characters moved to the OTHER side of the WORLD, that’s a damn big move so it is completely understandable why Dre Parker is pissed about moving, hell they’re not even in the same country.
Let me just say that “The Karate Kid” is often overlooked and the movie is a lot smarter then people think and it’s a shame we didn’t get a sequel seeing how it did pretty good at the box office, but it felt like a self contained story so even though a sequel hasn’t been produced and probably never will with the release of “Cobra Kai”.
The performances given by a young Jaden Smith as Dre Parker was great and often overlooked, but he really was engaged to the role and you could feel his anger for moving to a different and adjusting to a whole new place and Jackie Chan as Mr. Han is so brilliantly acted by him and he ain’t no Mr. Miyagi he’s stricter and more intimidating and I love how in this film we see why kung fu is used and where it came from and why he uses it and what it represent, on top of that we find ourselves not only seeing the teacher teaching the student, but also the student teaching the teacher and both learning from each other and have a different, but unique kind of bond then LaRusso and Miyagi. Smith and Chan bring out the best performances of each other.
The villains of this movie are brutal and more vicious then Johnny and the Cobra Kai, these little kids are scary as shit because these kids are skilled in kung fu and beat the living shit out of Dre and watching a kid getting his ass kicked isn’t fun to watch, the point is I like how as soon as we’re introduced to them we see their antagonistic presence and set it up for later in the film. The kung fu teacher wasn’t as loud as Martin Kove’s John Kreese, but this guy doesn’t hesitate to command to broke the opponent and threatens to get him and Dre attacked, I believe this guy is more crazier then Kreese.
The character development of Chan’s character was great, there was emotion and tragedy with such a good performance. The final fight was awesome and well played and enjoyable to see the bullies get what they deserved and the ending was satisfying to watch.
The remake of “The Karate Kid” was a pleasant surprise and a great movie with great development, but the love interest was just a subplot thrown in there and Dre’s mom played by Academy Award Nominee Taraji P. Henson gave a good performance as well, but wasn’t a highlight because she wasn’t a big player, but the good out weights the bad. This film is a remake, but could easily pass as a spin off, maybe we could see Jaden Smith or Jackie Chan make appearances in “Cobra Kai”, but seems unlikely, but hey stranger things have happened.
Grade: A-
