Note: About 10-15 percent of Karate Kid: Legends is in Mandarin, subtitled only in Czech in Prague cinemas.
A Chinese teenager who has relocated from Beijing to New York finds himself employing martial arts skills to help save a struggling local pizzeria owner in Karate Kid: Legends, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. This innocuous and generally likable return to the Karate Kid franchise nicely bridges the gap between the original films with Pat Morita, 2010’s The Karate Kid, and Netflix’s Cobra Kai—even if its new characters and original story are largely underdeveloped.
Karate Kid: Legends actually opens with Pat Morita, in the Okinawa dojo scene from The Karate Kid: Part II, where Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) of his family history, and of the ancestor who spent 10 years in China and returned with a martial arts secret. It’s nice to see this movie pay respects to the franchise that spawned it after the 2010 reboot ignored its roots, resulting in a title that didn’t even make sense (kung fu, not karate, was practiced in the film).
In present-day Beijing, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) from the 2010 film is still training kung fu at his ever-popular wuguan, but he’s about to lose one of his students. Li Fong (Ben Wang) is set to move to New York after his mother Dr. Fong (Ming-Na Wen) accepts a new job—and she doesn’t want him practicing kung fu, anyway, following the tragic death of his brother.
In Manhattan (nicely played by Montreal), Li quickly makes friends with Mia (Sadie Stanley), daughter of neighborhood pizzeria owner Victor Lipani (Joshua Jackson), and earns the nickname Stuffed Crust after an ill-advised request. Only problem: Mia’s ex is Conor (Aramis Knight) a hothead from the karate academy, and dad is in debt to local mafioso O’Shea (Tim Rozon) —who just happens to own that karate academy.
Will Li put his martial arts skills to use to help his new friends? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves: after a breezy setup, much of the second act of Karate Kid: Legends has Li training Victor—himself a former boxer—in the secrets of kung fu in order to win a prizefight and save his pizzeria. This film is almost all technique over discipline, which is disappointing considering the deeper thematic material of the earlier films, but a cheesy montage of kung fu moves and pizza prep is still plenty fun.
Wang is engaging in the lead even if his character—an accomplished martial artist who has none of the usual teenage problems, even as an immigrant in NYC—is blandly written. He’s aided by some terrific support, especially Jackson, who flashes some George Clooney swagger as the benevolent father who made some bad decisions but ruggedly pursues the best future for his daughter.
But these characters are all largely underdeveloped, as the movie seems to be rushing through its narrative to get to the conclusion. And an hour into the film, Karate Kid: Legends completely switches gears to now present a story about Mr. Han and Daniel LaRusso (Macchio, in the Cobra Kai version of the character) coming to New York to train Li in an underground Mortal Kombat-like MMA tournament.
This shouldn’t work—outside of one brief scene, neither of these characters have had anything to do in this 90-minute feature until the hour mark—but Chan and Macchio are irresistible as the bickering mentors competing to train Li on a Manhattan rooftop. Karate Kid: Legends largely forgets the story it was telling up to this point, and even leaves its primary antagonist without a comeuppance, but the energy these two bring to the film is satisfying in and of itself.
Karate Kid: Legends boasts some engaging fight scenes choreographed in Chan’s signature style, an abundance of likable performances, and nicely succeeds in its attempt to tie together the earlier films with the 2010 reboot and the Cobra Kai series. While the new plot and characters are thin—and the message of martial arts as a metaphor for self-development is largely abandoned—there’s enough to like here to wholeheartedly recommend for fans of the franchise.
