The Karate Kid
When 12-year-old Dre Parker (Jaden Smith)’s mother decides to leave Detroit and start a new career in Beijing, she takes him along and enters him in a local school. As a foreign newcomer, he is bullied by Cheng, a classmate, who studies Kung-fu. Dre is defended by the aging school caretaker, Mr Han (Jackie Chan), who takes him under his wing. Han begins teaching Dre the basics of kung-fu. Dre suffers the ravages of puppy-love with a girl in his class, leading to a lot of cultural misunderstandings and the disapproval of the girl’s father. Eventually, after many ups and downs, Cheng and Dre are scheduled to meet at a Kung-fu tournament, which is as much a battle between the two boys as it is between the contrasting philosophies of the seemingly washed-up Han (maturity, serenity) and Cheng’s sadistic teacher, Li (punches and power).
If this sounds familiar, it should. The entire plot of the original Karate Kid movie of the 80s has been updated and transposed to China, and more or less successfully. Jackie Chan can still steal any scene he appears in — besides, he really is a Kung-fu expert, so the teaching scenes are a pleasure to watch. Jaden Smith, son of Will, has great screen presence for a 12-year-old, but the character doesn’t sound like any 12-year-old I know (maybe I’ve just been living here too long). The movie was filmed on location in Beijing, and the director takes full advantage of this, filming around the various ancient temples, schoolhouses and courtyards that hadn’t already been bulldozed for the Olympics. The ‘street-smart-American-abroad vs the sinister-inscrutable-foreigner’ angle is there, naturally,
but fairly understated for a Hollywood film.
For such a careful adaptation, it’s beyond me why the producers insisted on calling it The Karate Kid. You might as well make a movie about a basketball team and call it Slapshot. In China, it’s sensibly called The Kung-fu Kid, and the Japanese (who know a thing or two about karate) opted to rename it (blandly) Best Kid. Can’t say that I blame them.
• Japanese title: Best Kid • Columbia Pictures • 140min • Dir. Harald Zwart • Cast: Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji Henson • In English and some Chinese, with Jap subtitles.
The A-Team
Back in the mid-1980s, there was an American TV series called The A-Team. It enjoyed a certain following among teenage boys and Nancy Reagan (despite its being about a team of outlaw Vietnam vets). It was the high point of Mr T’s career and the low point of poor old George Peppard’s. When other old bores my age whine about how much better network television used to be, just mentioning the A-Team usually shuts them up.
Yet this series, which until now rated at best a fewques- tions in the Trivial Pursuit 80s Edition, was dragged out, refitted, and is now a summer movie. But then, at the rate Hollywood has been pillaging the old movie and TV archives lately, I expect to see a Tom Hanks epic based on a 1972 Nescafé commercial by Christmas. Until then, we’ve got this.
The first forty minutes or so of the new A-Team involve the back story (which used to be, if I recall, the opening credits): the four soldiers, all with their own skills and eccentricities, now Special Ops officers stationed in Iraq, are asked to take part in a secret mission to break up a US currency counterfeiting ring. Mission accomplished, they are then framed as the instigators of the scam and are sentenced to ten years in a military prison. Six months later, they escape from the stockade and, as outlaws, attempt to clear their names, find the officer who framed them (and who was in on the counterfeiting) andphoto- genically blow up a lot of people.
Liam Neeson plays Hannibal, the cigar-chomping leader of the Team, and I can’t believe that an actor of his stature needs money this badly. The ultimate fighter Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson plays BA Baracus, the Incredible Hulk
of the group. A few of the surviving original cast make no-doubt grateful cameos. Conspicuous by his absence, though, is that old scenery chewer, Mr T, the original Baracus, who apparently wanted nothing to do with this remake. You’d be well advised to follow his lead. I pity
the fool who doesn’t. I pity the fool.
• 20th Century Fox • 117min • Dir. Joe Carnahan • Cast: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson • In English and some French, Spanish and Swahili, with Japanese subtitles
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