Last week I reviewed a movie from a long-running franchise trying to at least put an end to an era. This week is Karate Kid: Legends, from a series that’s trying to start a new era. After an introductory snippet from The Karate Kid Part II, the story picks up in the present day when teenage kung fu champion Li Fong (Ben Wang) is uprooted from Beijing to New York City, where his mother (Ming-Na Wen) starts a new job practicing medicine at a hospital and hopes to get Li interested in things other than martial arts. It almost works, as Li becomes smitten with Mia (Sadie Stanley), a classmate whose family runs the pizzeria down the block from his apartment. However, Mia’s former prizefighter dad Victor (Joshua Jackson) owes money to the mob, so Li resolves to train him to win a boxing match and enough money to clear his debt.
This should have been the main story. It’s not just that this reverses the usual dynamic and has the teenager giving the older man tips on fighting, nor is it the fact that Wang has better chemistry with Jackson than with anyone else in the cast. Look at the Ip Man series starring Donnie Yen, and you’ll see a bunch of movies about kung fu’s inherent superiority to martial-arts disciplines invented by barbaric foreigners. Here, Li’s training in kung fu shows Victor how to be a better boxer. The movie drills down into the basics of fighting sports at a level where most movies don’t, and Victor and Jackson both deserve more consideration than to have the character shunted aside.
Of course, screenwriter Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit) junks this subplot for one about Li doing his own fighting in a city-wide street karate tournament. For this, Li’s Chinese mentor Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) not only comes to America but also makes a detour to California to pick up Sensei Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) so he can school Li in the Japanese discipline. The script makes Han into a colleague of the deceased Mr. Miyagi to unite the whole series, and this point is not convincing. Nor is the film’s attempt to find a unified field theory of Asian martial arts, though again, this is preferable to the Ip Man series’ xenophobia. Li’s mother moves him to America over his opposition and then threatens to send him back if he keeps fighting, both of which he wants to do. The whole character makes no sense. It’s somewhat clever that Li’s big finishing move — akin to Daniel-san’s crane kick — becomes a decoy in his climactic showdown with the champion (Aramis Knight), but it would be a lot cleverer if the movie didn’t spoil its own surprise by having Li’s instructors show him how to use it.
But just like last week, there are other, more important factors at work here. First of all, the newcomer Wang has some serious moves, and no small amount of charisma. (Check out the Hulu series American Born Chinese, where he stars as a high-school student with no kung fu skills.) The fight sequences include a spectacular bit in a back alley when Li saves Victor from the gangsters by using a dumpster and a fire escape ladder to defeat the thugs. Then, too, Daniel-san and Mr. Han’s shared connections to Miyagi and their desire to help the kid in front of them rings true as well, and it’s capped by the appearance of someone else from the previous films. These things carry Karate Kid: Legends, perhaps far enough to give Li another and better story for him to write himself.
Karate Kid: Legends
Starring Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, and Ben Wang. Directed by Jonathan Entwistle. Written by Rob Lieber. Rated PG-13.
