Clocking 94 minutes, including credits, the narrative is neither long nor tedious. But the plot is crammed with cliches and call backs to the past
Still from Karate Kids: Legend
Film: Karate Kid: Legends
Cast: Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen, Aramis Knight, Wyatt Oleff
Director: Jonathan Entwistle
Rating: 2.5/5
Runtime: 94 min.
The sixth film in the series centers on a kung fu prodigy who enters a high-stakes martial arts competition to help a new friend.
After a family tragedy, Li Fong( Ben Wang) moves to New York City with his mother(Ming-Na Wen). When a new friend needs his help, Li enters a karate competition but his skills alone aren't enough. Li’s kung fu teacher, his uncle, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) enlists original Karate Kid Daniel LaRusso’s (Ralph Macchio) help, and Li has to learn a new way to fight, merging two styles into one, so that he can gain an upper hand in the ultimate martial arts showdown.
Li strikes up a friendship with Mia (Sadie Stanley), the daughter of Victor (Joshua Jackson), owner of a pizza shop around the corner. Her ex-boyfriend Connor (Aramis Knight) doesn’t like it and gives Li a black eye with a vicious sucker punch. But that’s not the only thing forcing Li to break his promise to his mother. Victor, a former championship boxer, is in serious debt to the sensei at the martial arts academy where Connor trains.
Li’s skill in fighting off some thugs impresses Victor so much that he decides to return to the ring to win fast bucks, with Li as his unlikely trainer. So the karate kid becomes the teacher, for a brief while before going for the big fight in a citywide tournament with a $50,000 cash prize.
The training montages are funny,one in the city parking lot and the other on a rooftop garden with a view of the Chrysler Building. In the second one we see the two Karate Kid veterans putting Li through exercises that bring on the nostalgia.
Clocking 94 minutes, including credits, the narrative is neither long nor tedious. But the plot is crammed with cliches and call backs to the past. The climactic bout on an open-air rooftop plays well but there’s not much to savour here. Karate Kid: Legends pays homage to its predecessors, with a clip from 1986’s The Karate Kid Part II, callbacks to past installments, and an end credits feature with one more franchise veteran.
A tepid mix of the original Karate Kid and Cobra Kai, this franchise continuation adds nothing new to the experience. It’s rather straightforward, simplistic and eschews technology and modern trappings. The story doesn’t develop beyond the 80’s format even though this is a product of high tech excess period. Other than some fancy editing in the fight sequences, there’s nothing fancy or technologically marvelous to cheer for here. It’s formulaic but entertaining nevertheless.
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