Karate Kid Review
The Karate Kid is somewhat a remake of the original Karate Kid starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. This movies tries to differ from the original by it being a 12 year old named Dre moving from Detriot to the Huge city of china. It shows the hardships of Dre who is moving to somewhere new let alone another country and how he has to try and fit in. He Tries to make friends with a young girl named Meiying who is his age which sets off a bully which scares Dre and makes the move very hard on Dre until he meets Mr Han played by Jackie Chan who Teaches him life lessons and Kung Fu. Along the Way Dre teaches Mr Han a few lessons himself.
The Film grabs your attention with the way the camera moves during fight scenes and the way in pans out to show you the city and the historical landmarks of china. During critical parts in the movie that show emotion the view shows you the body language and facial expressions that you would come to see as if it was happening right in front of you. The film is a different take on the Karate Kid but they left in the powerful scenes from the original with there own little twists which helps sell the movie.
The acting in the movie shows us a different side of Jackie Chan which just shows us how good of an actor he actually is. Its hard to live up to the performance of Mr. Miyagi from the original but Jackie put his own twist on it which makes him stand apart of the character of Mr. Miyagi and makes him his own character, which will be known as Mr. Han. As for Jaden Smith as Dre he did a pretty good job. People have said that during certain scenes he has just a blank stare at the situation which i think is perfect because as a 12 year old kid you are going to know how to take in certain things that are happening and how to respond which i think helps sell the character as believable. Zenwei Wang as the Cheng the bully did a great job of being the hard nosed mean kid and his performance was very believable as a true bully and would scare a lot of 12 year olds if they were like that to them which really sells the character.
Director Harold Zwart had a real challenge on his hands by directing a movie that is a loosely based remake because everyone loved the original karate kid and he had to put his own spin and make this movie as entertaining as the original. He has done a few other movies that are kid friendly suck as agent Cody banks and pink panther 2 so he had the kid aspect down but he had to throw in some drama into this movie also keeping it kid friendly and he lived up to the task and made a very entertaining movie for all ages.
I would rate this movie a 7 out of 10 and a great movie to take kids of all ages too.
