Director: Harold Zwart
Starring: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan
Released: 28/07/2010
Rating: PG
You would be forgiven for looking at the Film section this week and thinking we had been sent back through time to the 1980’s. The week’s two biggest releases are both 80’s reboots – The A Team (on which more here) and The Karate Kid.
Harold Zwart’s revival of the classic movie has been a cause of great controversy since it was first announced it was being made. Many who held the original in such high esteem feared that this would be Hollywood doing business as usual – ruining perfectly good movies with terrible remakes.
That’s not really the case here though. Certainly the name “Karate Kid” may be inappropriate given that the martial art studied throughout the film is Kung Fu (there is even a line where young Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) admonishes his mother for calling it karate), but other than the issues with the title, this is a perfectly watchable movie.
The real star of course is Jackie Chan as Mr Han, a Miyagi for this new generation. The film is at its emotional best when we learn of Han’s rather tragic back story, and the way in which both he and Dre deal with this is brilliantly portrayed on screen.
But let’s face it; this is not what most people will see this movie for. They’ll watch it to see Han’s real job in the film: teaching Dre the art of Kung Fu. It takes a little while for you to really see his true prowess – indeed it takes a while for anything to really happen at all, the first hour of this 2hour20minute stretch are spent setting up the plot and this really is too long given that everyone knows the story, and the ending, going in – but when it finally get’s going the training scenes are superbly choreographed, Smith proving more than a match for his older counterpart.
Sure the film is by no means perfect – the villains of the piece (a bully named Cheng and his Kung Fu sensei) are basically established as completely 2 dimensional baddies, while Dre is the pure-hearted hero – but surely that’s the point. You’re not going to sit down to watch The Karate Kid and expect to see an Oscar winner of a movie. You’re going to sit there and want to see a fun ride, and that’s what this movie delivers – especially in the second half.
As the film built towards the inevitable Kung Fu tournament at the end, you would have thought we were watching an actual sporting event, as about half the people in the screening I saw of the movie were literally cheering, clapping and booing their way through the final 30minutes of the movie. It was like nothing I have ever experienced in a cinema before, and it really added to the atmosphere of the whole experience.
If you compare it to the original it probably doesn’t match up. But just don’t compare it, and enjoy this for what it is – an exciting evening’s cinema which will leave you smiling by the end.
James Gordon
Tags: jackie chan, jaden smith, karate kid
