In the overstuffed ‘Karate Kid: Legends,' too many storylines compete for dominance
The problem with 'Karate Kid: Legends' is right there in the title: 'legends,' as in multiple. Many beloved 'Karate Kid' characters and icons of millennial sports movies enter the ring, but in the ensuing melee, no one emerges victorious.
Written by Rob Lieber and directed by Jonathan Entwistle, 'Karate Kid: Legends' is another revamp of the franchise, which now boasts four movies from the 1980s and '90s, an animated series, a 2010 remake starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan and a long-running Netflix spinoff series, 'Cobra Kai,' following the original characters, now as adults. This new film is a 'lega-sequel,' if you will, combining characters from both the original film and the recent remake with a new setting: the Big Apple.
The saying 'two branches, one tree' is oft-repeated throughout the film to explain the two different kinds of martial-arts training (karate and kung fu) that come together to shape our new young fighter, Li Fong (Ben Wang). But 'Karate Kid: Legends' doesn't have a strong, steady trunk to support these separate offshoots. Instead, it's two movies at war with each other, fists and feet flying in a whirlwind.
In one corner and comprising the first half of the film, you have a surprisingly fun and refreshing twist on 'Karate Kid,' in which the martial-arts student becomes the teacher. Young Li, grieving the death of his kung fu champ older brother, is yanked out of kung fu school in Beijing (where he's being trained by Chan's Shifu) by his mother (Ming-Na Wen) and uprooted to New York City.
There, Li befriends Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father, Victor (Joshua Jackson), who run a pizza joint and have run afoul of a loan shark, O'Shea (Tim Rozon), who also happens to run a mixed martial-arts gym. Victor, a former boxer, has entered into a prize fight hoping to win the purse, and enlists Li as his new trainer, who agrees because he believes training Victor won't break his 'no fighting' promise to his mother.
Now, a 'The Fighter'-style comeback movie starring '90s kids sports movie icon Jackson ('The Mighty Ducks') would be a great film on its own. Alas, this is a 'Karate Kid' movie that promises 'legends,' so the pizza shop boxing-training movie is quickly dispatched in favor of Shifu and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) descending on New York from Beijing and Los Angeles, respectively, to train Li to fight in the 5 Boroughs tournament against sadistic MMA fighter Connor (Aramis Knight).
The movie is so divided in its storytelling aims that there's a sequence where Li's tournament rounds and training are spliced in with moments of character and story development, connected by frantically fast drone shots that zip over the city. The pacing of this film is breakneck on speed; it feels like watching a movie on fast-forward at times. Much of the story work is executed during rapid-fire montages, using familiar archetypes and stereotypes to sketch out the basic narrative. The frenetic fight sequences are so fast and fluid, ramping between slow-motion and fast-motion, that your eye can hardly land anywhere or even appreciate the choreography.
Despite being two movies smashed together, torturously twisted in order to get all these legends at one tournament, 'Karate Kid: Legends' isn't a wholly unpleasant experience, largely due to the charms of star Wang, who has a bashfully appealing presence that belies his seriously lethal skills. He has a sparkling chemistry with Stanley and Jackson, further emphasizing that the filmmakers should have stuck with that one story, rather than falling back on the old karate kid tropes we know so well.
Alas, it seems originality was not the goal with 'Karate Kids: Legends,' even if those hints of newness are the most interesting part of the movie. Legends never die, as they say, for better or worse, and in the case of this film, it's for worse.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
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