Because it’s the sixth installment of a 40-year-old franchise, you might assume that “Karate Kid: Legends” is going to retrofit the formula, filtering it through the sort of technologically empowered overkill that defines most latter-day sequels. There’s one explicit way that the movie updates the series. The hero, Li Fong (Ben Wang), is a teenager who’s been training at the Beijing dojo of shifu Han (Jackie Chan), where he has mastered a kung fu move called the dragon kick, a corkscrew balletic twirl that climaxes with a foot-smash to the head of your opponent — a move captured, in all its complex gymnastic glory, through rapid-fire cutting and slo-mo. It’s the film’s one concession to the four decades of Asian action cinema that have taken place since the original “Karate Kid,” and it’s designed to give you that “This is not your father’s Ralph Macchio fairy tale!” feeling.
Li, by the end, has learned to fight in a style that merges kung fu and karate — all of which traces back to the fact that Mr. Miyagi was from Japan, and that after Noriyuki “Pat” Morita died, in 2005, the producers replaced him with Jackie Chan, who is from the Hong Kong school. The films now braid two different fighting traditions together into a mythology of “two branches, one tree.”
But enough “Karate Kid” housekeeping! The key thing to know about “Karate Kid: Legends” is that from the moment Li arrives in New York City, where his mother (Ming-Na Wen) has chosen to move them after the tragic death of Li’s kung-fu-champion brother, the film dunks us in a storyline so simple, so unironic, so cheesy-sincere, so analog that you may feel it transporting you right back to the “innocence” of the ’80s. And that’s actually the best thing about “Karate Kid: Legends.” It’s a film that’s unapologetically basic and wholesome and, at 94 minutes, refreshingly stripped down. In its formulaic way, it works as an antidote to the bloat and clutter of your average “high-powered” teenage/kiddie flick.
How old-fashioned is it? In his new downtown Manhattan home, Li forms a connection with Mia, a high-school classmate who works for her dad at the local pizza shop. Sadie Stanley, who plays her, acts with an eagerly ingenuous personality that feels entirely pre-social media, to the point that she evokes the Ally Sheedy of “WarGames.” (Yes, that’s a high compliment; keep an eye out for Sadie Stanley.) Mia’s ex-boyfriend, Conor (Aramis Knight), with his junior Steven Seagal slicked-back hair and stare, is like the bully in a John Hughes movie. He will end up being Li’s martial-arts antagonist, and by the time the film gets there, our collective desire to see a dragon-kick ass-kicking is palpable. But for Li to succeed, he must triumph over a very 20th-century dilemma: that he “froze” at the moment he should have been saving his brother.
It’s taken four decades for Hollywood to center a “Karate Kid” movie around a hero who’s Asian, but Ben Wang doesn’t wear that distinction like a heavy mantle. In “Karate Kid: Legends,” he’s lithe and captivating. Wang, who’s 25 but looks much younger, gives off the vibe of an adolescent Bruce Lee, though I don’t mean to suggest he conjures Lee’s kung-fu-fighting genius. I mean that he evokes his delicacy — the lightness that was the flip side of Lee’s savagery, since it allowed him to be so fast that he was like a human razor slicing through his enemies.
The original “Karate Kid” film remains the best one, because the novelty of subjecting Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso to the “Wax on, wax off” Buddhist training of Mr. Miyagi has never been duplicated. But “Karate Kid: Legends” is the first entry in the franchise to be made in the shadow of “Cobra Kai,” the six-season Netflix series that paired the adult Daniel and his nemesis-turned-comrade, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), and the movie grows out of that show’s ebullient spirit.
For a while, Li becomes a trainer himself, coaching Mia’s father, Victor (Joshua Jackson, who’s like a softer-edged George Clooney), in how to get back into the boxing ring. (The training works…until it doesn’t.) But who will train Li? It’s down to the only two who could: Han, flying in from Beijing, and Daniel, played by Macchio with seasoned charm. This tag-team of combat gurus turns out to be an ace comedy team. The ageless appeal of Jackie Chan is that under that polite smile he’s sternly intractable — he will not give an inch — and Macchio, in a coif that looks like it came through a time machine, parades his karatay expertise with a confidence that earns its authority.
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The film’s set-up feels a bit disconnected from the climactic martial-arts tournament: a gritty New York event called the 5 Boroughs, in which fighters from all over the city compete with each other in the streets. The director, Jonathan Entwistle, doesn’t belabor it. The film whips through the early rounds and gets right down to the finale, shot on a Manhattan rooftop at the magic hour, with Li and Conor going at each other and Li wielding the secret weapon he trained for by learning how to duck under a subway turnstile. “Karate Kid: Legends” is likable retro corn, but by the end you may just think: Ain’t that a kick in the head.
From Variety US