Film: The Karate Kid
Release date: 15th November 2010
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 130 mins
Director: Harald Zwart
Starring: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han, Rongguang Yu
Genre: Action/Drama/Family/Martial Arts
Studio: Sony
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: USA/China
This is an English-Language release.
It may now be set in China, with an Afro-American child lead, but there are plenty of similarities for nostalgic fans of the original, as The Karate Kid becomes the latest ‘victim’ of the Hollywood reboot.
Dre Parker’s mother shows zero responsibility and care for her child by uprooting him from his home and friends in Detroit, USA and taking him across to Beijing, China, with minimal notice or preparation, for a standard employment opportunity.
Now alone and feeling lost in a foreign land, Dre takes a shine to young Chinese musician Mei Ying, but this does not impress the local kung fu kid, who, displaying superman-esque strength, gives Dre a thorough ass whooping.
With even less friends now, and a mother too busy to spend any time with him let alone address his ill-manners properly, Dre becomes increasingly isolated and depressed, as the bullying continues.
Looking to get his own back on these young brutes only lands Dre in even hotter water, and it’s left to handyman Mr. Han to save him from a precarious situation - by beating up a group of children.
This angers the children’s sensei, and the only way Mr. Han can think of avoiding more blood spill on the streets of Beijing is to enter Dre into an upcoming martial arts competition. Mr. Han will train him, but he has some unusual methods that will test the patience of the already testy Dre…
Of course, a remake, where so much of the original’s story has been retained (bar a completely new country), of such an iconic 80s children’s favourite will struggle for much goodwill amongst fans of the original, but, given its PG-certificate, this is being targeted at a whole new generation, who have likely never seen the original, and will no doubt relate to the petulant Dre character, and be thoroughly engrossed by its flashy, over-the-top fight scenes and loud soundtrack – they don’t need any emotional weight, moral aspect, or character relation. In fact, had they seen the original they’d no doubt find it tame in comparison, where Ralph Macchio in the role of Daniel Larusso was asked to get off his butt and do a bit of work (we’ll get to this later), whilst holding an elderly fellow in reverence as he passed on words of wisdom.
Unfortunately, for an adult viewing, The Karate Kid raises some serious questions mostly about the desensitisation of children today, who are growing up with intense, and at times fairly violent and aggressive video games and television – and nothing else. Here, in one of the film’s earliest scenes, where Dre is first confronted by his nemesis, we have a character presented as demonic, with power and strength well beyond his years, beating seven bells out of a small child with the slightest frame in a fairly graphic and bone crunching manner – this should be terrifying viewing for any child. For any adult, it makes for uncomfortable viewing, because it’s outright wrong (let’s forget all the racial stereotyping in this critique).
We’ll overlook the fact that the film is called Karate Kid, even though nobody is trained in that discipline, and that they’ve set the film in China, when, had they lived up to the film’s billing, Karate originates from Japan. This is being pedantic, and, of course, makes very little difference to the ‘boy trains to beat up bully’ premise. The biggest question has to be why they opted for such a young lead (perhaps not such a big question when you consider his father’s clout within the industry – Will Smith has a production credit here), which not only raises the aforementioned concerns, but takes the film into the realms of extreme fantasy – how does this compute in a child’s mind. In the original, Ralph was a twenty-something playing the role of a 16-year-old. He was at an age where hormones are raging and romantic interests and conflicts are commonplace; he was fighting against fellow older actors of a sizeable stature, in realistic scenarios; and everything was grounded in moral messages that ultimately fighting is wrong. Here we are expected to believe that someone who looks barely 10 is really going to be all that concerned with the fairer sex – let alone displaying the depth of emotional understanding we are shown during many of the film’s laborious moments – and that the bullies of the piece can fly around the screen with the strength to give Jackie Chan of all actors – still in decent shape - a tough time. The only message coming across is violence is good, and forget respecting anyone else – let alone an elder – unless you quite fancy them.
In fairness, Jackie Chan puts in a solid performance – a far better dramatic display than his much-hyped role in The Shinjuku Incident. But again, all the fun has been taken away. Part of the joy of the original was seeing the podgy, diminutive, elder Mr. Miyagi turning out to be an agile martial arts expert, and alongside his principles that vitally grounded the film’s events, he brought a humour to the part that was so enjoyable for a child viewer (he also disposed of these older, larger adversaries quickly – it wouldn’t have been half as cool if he spent half-an-hour knocking about infants). In this film, we have a dark, breakdown scene where Jackie completely loses it and bears his soul. Apparently, we are now expecting children to take on board such heavy issues - and amongst the fierce carnage that would leave any fully developed mind a little rattled.
As mentioned at the start of this review, fans of the original are going to pick holes, particularly in the initial training, where instead of the pupil being asked to clean and polish his trainer’s car (the infamous wax on, wax off scenes) and paint his fence - and the subsequent joyful enlightenment for both the viewer and the character when the big reveal shows all these menial tasks were actually grounding him in the basics of good karate skills - here the writers thought it would be enough to have him just hang his coat up, put it down, drop it on the floor, on repeat, for what seemed like an eternity. This is before it goes completely over-the-top as he quickly becomes the new Bruce Lee, if compensated for by some spectacular scenery.
That brings us to the running time. Unfortunately, the filmmakers got sidetracked with an unnecessaryily long romantic sub plot, which adds nothing – it certainly won’t impress child viewers where the thought of making out repulses, and who are waiting for their next fix of CGI enhanced kick ass, and neither Jaden Smith in the role of Dre or Wenwen Han in the role of Mei Ying have the acting chops to pull it off. In fact, the only commendable aspect of Jaden’s performance is in his physicality, although it’s uneasy that a child actor so young would be expected to develop in such a way – yet another unhealthy message for its target audience. Also clocking up the minutes is the big ‘visit China’ sell – all the key visitor attractions are enhanced and displayed on the grandest of scales. Whilst it may have helped with the production costs, and no doubt younger viewers will be in awe, it hampers progress of what, ignoring the moral concerns any right minded adult would have watching, is a decent, standard, big budget Hollywood action flick.
There’s nothing here for adults, the characters are too young for older teenagers, who have progressed to blowing people up on X-Box for their amusement, so this is definitely targeted at young children. Given its PG-rating, the choice should (although probably not) be with the parents as to whether they feel their child is ready to be exposed to such levels of emotional and physical distress – if they haven’t been already.
Kids today will lap it up. Fresh from smashing someone through a wall on their latest video game, they can now watch an actual person do it. For fans of the original, all the basic story elements are in place, it just lacks any of that film’s warmth, humour or soul. However, the biggest crime is the complete lack of responsibility Hollywood has again shown as those involved focus solely on boosting their bank balances. DH
No comments:
Post a Comment