The first thing I noticed about the film during its opening moments was that the photography is much more interesting and beautiful than I was ready for. When hearing about a hip, updated version of The Karate Kid I had horrific flashes in my mind of jerky camera work, quick cuts, and maybe some sort of color filters to make everything seem grittier. This film goes in the opposite direction in a very pleasing way. Whether it was the work of the DP, the production designer, or the result of good collaboration between multiple people, every frame is filled with vibrant color. The scenes are framed with a backdrop of plants, flowers, commerce, life, and people. It’s a really effective way of throwing you right into Beijing and having you swept away by the experience. The camera moved in competent, non-intrusive ways, putting the focus on the characters and the environment rather than on the fact you are watching a crafted film. The experience is immersive. There’s a scene transition somewhere in the second act that especially jumped out at me. The fireworks from a puppet show at a street festival blend seamlessly into the welding sparks of the new Miyagi character working on a car in his living room, and suddenly you’re in a new location. The effect reminded me very much of those wonderful montage sequences in The Graduate, and I’d like to go back through this film a bit and see if I could pick up on anymore slick little tricks that might have been placed throughout. This one moment showed me, at the very least, that somebody was paying attention to the details, somebody actually cared about how this film looked, and somebody was treating this project as more a piece of art and less an opportunity to hastily cash in on The Karate Kid name. That right there is a hugely reassuring feeling, and allowed me to push my prejudices aside and try to enjoy what this new film had to offer.
The second big thing that this film has going for it is the Chinese setting itself. If I’m not mistaken, not many big Hollywood productions have been allowed access to famous Chinese landmarks like this. In the first film Daniel is a fish out of water due to his big move from the east coast of the United States to the west coast. Sure, a move from Jersey to Cali is probably a bit of an adjustment, but the way that Daniel is treated like some sort of alien in the first film always seemed a bit melodramatic to me. Here, with Jaden Smith’s Dre character moving from Detroit to Beijing, that fish out of water struggling to make peace with an uninviting culture storyline suddenly takes on more prominence, becomes more believable, and most importantly is more interesting to watch. I did begin to wonder what sort of concessions the Chinese government made these filmmakers agree to in order to get such open access to film in China. The early scenes in Detroit wallow in poverty and squalor in sharp contrast to those Beijing scenes that are framed with life and vitality I mentioned earlier. The scenes in Detroit are filmed with decay always invading the frame. Every corner they go around has another boarded up building. Every bit of dialogue is filmed with a closed business in the background. When the film gets to China there is construction in the background of everything. People are selling things, enjoying parks, etc. At a point it starts to feel like borderline propaganda, but it can also just be viewed as a film that is crafted with visual layers and multiple themes. The difference between the serious, disciplined Chinese lifestyle and the more free wheeling, slacker nature of America is explored at least to some degree here. It’s no secret that China has made industrial and economic gains while we have gone backwards in recent years. Should the film have hid or not addressed that? And in addition to just showing the differences between here and there, the setting adds to the film by being flat out beautiful to look at. Never before have I seen Chinese landmarks like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City filmed in such interesting, close up ways as they are when used as scenery in this film. Sure it all gets to be a bit much after a while, it’s hard to understand why the protagonists need to constantly trek out to exotic locals in order to do simple martial arts training, and the film starts to take on the feeling of a travel documentary; but it’s not pushed so far that I stopped enjoying the story, and it never got to the point of boring me rather than visually thrilling me. Though, with a two and a half hour runtime, I imagine this might begin to become the case upon multiple viewings.
I realize that I’ve gotten pretty far into this review without doing any sort of plot summary. Mostly that’s because I’m assuming anybody reading this is already familiar with the original Karate Kid, and this film doesn’t veer off very far from the story beats of that original. The original had Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita as the bullied Daniel and his mentor Miyagi. This film has Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan as the bullied Dre and his mentor Han. If the story is the same, the question then becomes how these characters compare to those of the original film, and how the actors stand up to their predecessors. Jaden Smith does a good job here. He’s a good little actor, and pretty damn adorable. He’s able to play precocious without going too far toward annoying. He handles all of the physical stuff inherent in this role well, and looks more comfortable as a budding martial arts master than Macchio ever did. He handles the dramatic moments effectively and never looks like a little kid out of his element. There’s no reason that Smith won’t become a huge star in the future, especially with the box office clout of his father already backing him. There’s a couple moments in the film that stuck in my craw and revealed this to be a vanity project, like transparent excuses to write in scenes where Jaden can show off his dancing skills, but the ‘chosen son’ nature of Smith’s casting was never enough to overpower his on-screen presence, and I found him to be likable throughout. Especially when compared to the original series’ Daniel, who always came off as a bit of a clueless whiner. In that film you could always take a bit of sadistic pleasure in watching Daniel’s little twerp butt get kicked; here you like Dre and can really feel for him as he’s bullied by the evil cadre of kung-fu students that make up this film’s antagonists. Chan is also really effective here as Mr. Han. He plays this character much more subdued and restrained than what he usually does in his action films, and it’s a nice change of pace. There’s a scene where he fights the group of child bullies without ever actually striking them that borders on getting too cutesy, but generally what he does in this film is much more grounded and real than the over the top stunt work that he’s mostly known for. This film also provides him with a few choice dramatic moments that he mostly does well with. It’s nice to see him adding weight to things, rather than just cheesing at the camera like he has often done in his past films. He never quite matches the lovable, magnetic qualities that Morita brought to the original, but I can’t imagine a better choice than Chan for the new Mr. Miyagi.
Probably the most important part of a Karate Kid movie is its climax and the cathartic experience that comes from watching the protagonist rise against the odds and defeat his tormentors. The way this film handled the big film-ending tournament is a bit of a mixed bag. The tournament is shrewdly structured, giving you a little something to care about in each of the fighters that make it to the semi-finals without spending too much time on meaningless fight sequences between anonymous background characters. It was really kind of a wonder of compact storytelling. The problems I had were with the big healing moment between Han and Dre and with the big fight-ending finishing move that Dre uses. The tournament follows the same structure as the first film; Dre surprises everyone with his skill, his leg is attacked, and then it’s unclear whether or not he can continue into the finals until he is mystically healed by his mentor in the locker room. The healing scene worked for me in the original film, maybe because I first saw it as a child, but I think mostly because it was played with less gravitas than it is in this update. The dialogue was really heavy handed, too much weight was given to Dre’s brave decision to continue, and the scene devolved into cheesy melodrama. It was the one moment in this film where the principle actors couldn’t make things work for me. Maybe the biggest hook this film lacked that the original had was the Crane Kick. That one trope, that one unstoppable move was burned into the minds of a generation of little kids that came out of theaters in 1984 mimicking it. It’s set up as special early in the film, Daniel’s practice of the move builds throughout, and the payoff of him hitting it is ultimately satisfying. Here, instead of a crane kick, there is a scene early on of a woman snake charming a cobra on the top of a mountain (that seemed a little too out there and weird for the rest of this movie) that plays into the big finish. At no time during the film did I even realize that it was going to play into the final move, instead I thought it would be Dre hitting the big high kick that he practices under a bell for most of his training. It’s even the image used on the movie poster! But, instead, that kick he arbitrarily hits in the first match and the alternate ending we’re given left me cold and confused. This film lacks that big iconic moment that has made the original Karate Kid part of the fabric of pop culture. And despite Smith looking more comfortable with martial arts than Macchio, this film was never able to convince me that he could actually beat the meathead little Chinese studs that he’s put up against without it.
