Thursday, June 17, 2010

Movie Review: The Karate Kid (2010)




I finally found some time to watch the movie - a newer version of the original Karate Kid trilogy many years ago. The movie is about how a reluctant Detroit-born kid is forced to move to Beijing to start life anew because her mother Sherry (Taraji P. Henson) is transferred to a new workplace. New to the neighborhood, Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) tries to make friends with the children, especially to a violin prodigy Meiying (Wenwen Han) but instead has a series of bad encounters with the local bullies. During one of the deadlier encounters, Mr Han (Jackie Chan) finally intervened and stopped the bullies in time.

After much pleading, Mr Han accompanied Dre Parker to the martial arts school where the bullies learned their arts, only to realize they were trained to be cruel, unthinking fighters by their teacher Master Li (Rongguang Yu) inside. Master Li arrogantly put up a challenge and Mr Han reluctantly agreed to train Dre Parker to meet Master Li's disciples in a national martial arts tournament.

What follows is a series of interesting training sessions, including the seemingly-mindless "Take off your jacket-put up your jacket-take it off" routine but what is truly captivating is when Mr Han takes Dre Parker to what I believed to be Mount Wudang (one of the top martial arts sect in China where Taiji Quan is originated from). Dre Parker witnesses all sorts of martial arts and is deeply moved by the concentration level of all the master practitioners there.

All these while, Dre Parker tries even harder to develop a love relationship with Meiying, only to be rebuffed by her strict parents, because Dre takes off with Meiying from a violin practice session without permission and nearly costs Meiying's violin auditions with the Beijing Academy of Music. A sincere reading of an apology to Meiying's father finally wins the forgiveness and the two young lovebirds are together again before Dre's impending martial arts tournament.

The tournament is one exciting affair and the audience is treated to a spectacular display of agility and aggression from the various promising young martial artistes. Dre Parker, after the initial confusion, finally gets the hang of the competition rules, and starts delivering excellent moves, match after match but suffers a horrific injury to his thigh at the semi-finals when Master Li instructs his semi-finalist disciple to break his leg. Dre Parker pleads with Mr Han to use an ancient bulb-heating healing technique to temporarily heal his leg and he forces himself to enter the finals only to be floored badly by his nemesis bully and with his thigh twice injured, Dre Parker struggles up for one final technique which he learns on his own (a snake stance which he witnesses at Mount Wudang) and delivers an amazing flip kick to gain the final point for his victory.

This is one movie worth watching because you get to enjoy an innocent love story beyond racial lines, an unusual martial arts training regime, an exciting martial arts tournament and even a emotional scene between Mr Han as he shares the reason why he has a car in his house's living room. I love the acting and chemistry between Mr Han and Jaden Smith and also the realism between the mother and son relationship as they struggle to cope with a completely alien culture.

I will give a four popcorn out of five for this not-to-be-missed movie, which really influences the audience, especially the young movie-goers who are just re-enacting the moves even as they leave the cinema. I hope they will also understand not just the beauty of martial arts but also the deep philosophies behind the value of them as a way of living and respecting oneself and others as well.

"Kungfu is in everyday life!"

This is an edited version of the original Karate Kid which shows most of the footage of their version of karate tournament. Hope you enjoy this as well... ^__^

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