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Courage, inspiration, friendship, love … these are all the words start ringing in your mind once you have seen the movie.
Every remake takes you back to the original, so does this one. Produced by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and directed by Harald Zwart (Agent Cody Banks & Pink Panther 2), we can expect something good dishing out this summer. Jaden Smith has already proved himself in the “Pursuit of Happiness” performing beside father (Will Smith). Will Smith has swept off all the big names in the industry so did Jaden at the age of 10, he has the genes which will take him to the top. This movie has big names attached to it, Oscar Nominee, Taraji P. Henson (Four Brother, Smoking Aces, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), & Jakie Chan who has become a household name for all the martial art based characters after Bruce Lee.
The movie rejuvenates the whole theme of the 1984 Karate Kid. The story is not as lame as most of the remakes turn out to be. In the present time when a single mother Sherry Parker (Henson) has to reallocate with her son to China, Dre Parker (Smith) find himself in the totally different world and has problem adjusting especially when he is bullied and beaten by the street boys, also happens to be his schoolmates. Parker finds comfort in a young violinist’s company, Meiying (Wenwen Han). Mr. Han (Chan) is handy man working as a maintenance personnel for the residential building, when he come across this dilemma which poor young boy is facing daily, he intervenes and defend him from all the hostility.
Parker requests Han to teach him martial arts but initially he refuses but later he realizes that he is the only hope for the poor soul since he is not just alone.
The Karate Kid is quite a better flick with respect to the contemporary story lines and best of all that you don’t even have to look back and see where the actual legend started because a lot of people can’t blame if they were not even born at that time. A lot of great locations including Great Wall and very carefully chosen areas to show proper working class community.
There are a few low-points as well. There is not as much action as it was expected probably Jaden is not as muscular as the other counter martial artists are which appears to be quite fragile when it comes to fight. The romance between Parker and the Meiying not appropriate at all when they have not even reached their teens which might be offensive to some people.
Overall it is nicely done and worth going theatre to.
Samson S John |
