OK this post goes back to the1980s vault again (seems almost like a theme this month!) and I will look at a real classic, the martial arts romantic drama, The Karate Kid, which launched the career of Ralph Macchio, who developed a fine line in playing teenagers after this (despite the fact he was 23 at the time!). Anyway so let's take a look....
Right so the film starts with teenager, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and his mother (Randee Heller) moving from Newark, New Jersey out to Reseda in Los Angeles. Once they arrive Daniel befriends a boy from the neighbourhood and he also meets the apartment handyman, Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita) an eccentric but kind immigrant from Okinawa. The boy invites Daniel to a beach party where he meets Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue) an attractive high school cheerleader. However the party is interrupted by Ali's ex-boyfriend, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) who is an arrogant bully, who Daniel confronts and ends up on receiving end of a beating from Johnny, who turns out to be a top karate student at a local club called Cobra Kai. Daniel decides to start practising karate as well, as he knows a little from classes he attended at the YMCA back in Jersey. As time goes on Daniel makes progress wih Ali, but he is tormented and bullied by Johnny and his Cobrai Kai classmates at every opportunity. This soon culminates when Daniel plays a trick on Johnny at the school prom which backfires on him as Johnny catches up with Daniel and gives him a severe beating. However at this point Miyagi arrives to rescue Daniel from Johnny and his classmates as he subdues them with an impressive display of karate. Daniel is impressed by Mr Miyagi's skill and asks him to be his tutor so he can get even with Johnny, but Miyagi refuses at first, but does agree to go along with him to confront the Johnny and his classmates at the Cobra Kai class.
On turning up at the Cobrai kai class, Miyagi speaks with the class's sensei (Japanese for teacher) John Kreese (Martin Kove) who is a former special forces Vietnam veteran, who teaches an aggressive approach to karate, and that "mercy is for the weak!". Miyagi asks Kreese that Johnny leave Daniel alone, however Kreese insists that Daniel and Johnny fight it out in the class, but Miyagi instead suggests they fight at an upcoming karate tournament, to which Kreese agrees to let Daniel attend. Miyagi also asks Kreese that Johnny and his classmates leave Daniel alone to train, to which Kreese agrees but warns Miyagi that if Daniel doesn't show then the harrassment will continue, and Miyagi will also become a target. And from here Daniel starts his training under Miyagi's wing, which starts with a rather unorthodox approach with giving Daniel manual labour chores, such as cleaning his cars, painting his fence and house. After a few days of this Daniel grows exasperated with Miyagi as he feels that Miyagi is using him rather than teaching him, but Miyagi eventually shows Daniel that by doing these chores he has been unconsciously been learning his defensive blocks used in karate, via muscle memory. After this Daniel and Miyagi train closer together and at the same time Daniel continues to grow closer to Ali, but its not too long before the tournament is round the corner where Daniel will have to fight in order to gain the respect of his rivals.
There is no doubt that the Karate Kid is a classic film of the martial arts genre, and what's great about it is of course not so much of the emphasis is on the karate as its more on the relationship between Daniel and Mr Miyagi, which is what makes the film work so well. Director John G.Avildsen, who directed Rocky, uses a similar theme here as he did with Rocky, by using the underdog, with Daniel in a position where he is forced to stand up to his tormentors and in doing he has to learn karate, which he uses in order to fight them and gain their respect.
Moving onto the performances, the cast are all pretty good here, starting with Ralph Macchio who does a fine job as the likeable Daniel LaRusso, who is soon put in a position where he is forced to deal with the local high school bullies that torment him. Macchio has quite a few highlights, and his best moments are in his scenes with Mr Miyagi, particularly in the sequence where under Mr Miyagi's instruction has to clean his cars, paint his fence and his house, and he grows fed up with these tasks and Miyagi eventually shows what he has learned by Miygai making him use the motions he instructed him with when doing each task. But my favourite moment is probably when Daniel is nearly cornered by Johnny and his classmates when Daniel manages to escape them by speaking to a nearby school teacher about a history class, and Daniel says he was interested in hearing about the class and that his buddies would like to hear it as well, then Johnny and his friends all back away and move off saying "No I've gotta go!". Macchio also has a pretty cheesy but endearing scene where he goes to the school prom dressed up as a shower, where he shares a dance with Ali and he says to her about Johnny "well what goes around comes around". And later on he plays a prank on Johnny by feeding a hosepipe into the toilet cubicle he occupies and turns on the water, soaking Johnny, Daniels runs off and says to Ali as he runs by "its coming around!".
Pat Morita is great as Mr Miyagi and he also received an oscar nomination for his performance as well, and he plays Miyagi as an eccentric but decent man, who helps out Daniel and during their training they become good friends, and he plays Miyagi with a calm tone and a dry wit. Morita get's most of the film's best dialogue and he has plenty of highlights, which include the scene where Daniel asks Miyagi what kind of belt does he have, i.e. belt in karate status, and Morita shows him his belt around his trousers "JC Penney, $3.98! Do you like?? In Okinawa belt is only used as a rope to hold up pants!". Also when he first shows Daniel the movements he wants him to use when cleaning his cars, he says the famous line "wax on, wax off, wax on, wax off....." and as he moves off Daniel asks Miyagi where did he get his cars from and Miyagi answers "Detroit!". Also in the scene where Miyagi and Daniel finish training on the beach he walks up to his truck and Miyagi asks two men to remove their beer bottles of his car, to which they refuse, and Miyagi does a karate chop and cuts the tops of the bottles off without the bottles dropping on the floor. Daniel looks on amazed and then says "How did you do that???!" and Miyagi replies "Don't know. First time!". But Miyagi best scene is of course where he finally reveals to Daniel what his laborious chores have been about by using the movements he asked him to use, such as "show me sand the floor!" and "show me paint the fence!" and he says to Daniel as he shows the moves are actually his defensive blocks for karate. And at the end of the scene as Daniel bows he looks down and Miyagi testily smacks him on the head and says "Eye! Always look eye! Come back tomorrow!". Morita's oscar nomination ironically was actually the result of the scene where he get's drunk and wears his army uniform from his days in the second world war, and he sadly reflects on the death of his wife, who died in childbirth. But the execs at the time of the film's shooting felt this scene detracted from the pace of the film and felt it should have been cut, which once again just goes to show what they know!
In other performances, Elisabeth Shue is pretty good (and pretty!) as Daniel's love interest, Ali, as she plays her pretty much straight down the line as a nice girl, who falls for Daniel, but at the same time she has to contend with her jealous ex-boyfriend, Johnny, Daniel's nemesis who stands between the fledgling relationship. Martin Kove is great as the main antagonist of the film, Kreese, the ruthless Cobrai Kai karate instructor, and he too get's plenty of classic lines, one such line is a classic where he says to his students during class "pain does not exist in this dojo!" "fear does not exist in this dojo!". Also his main highlight is the scene where Daniel and Mr Miyagi pay Kreese a visit and Miyagi asks Kreese to have Johnny leave Daniel alone and Kreese says "this is a karate dojo, not a knitting class! Now get your boy on the mat or we'll have a problem!". And when Miyagi asks Kreese the favour of leaving Daniel alone to train, Kreese almost laughs and says "you're pushy little bastard, aren't you?! But I like that!". And one of my favourite lines is when he says to Miyagi and Daniel "but if he doesn't show, then its open season on him and you!". And of course there is the scene later on during the climactic fight between Daniel and Johnny where he says to Johnny "sweep the leg!". John G Avildsen also amusingly gave Kreese a unique piece of direction throughout the film, which was never to smile, and Kove manages to do that really well and instead he proves a few smug smirks.
Which brings me onto William Zabka as Johnny, who isn't bad in his role as Daniel's nemesis, although ultimately due to his bleach blonde hairdo he doesn't always looks that threatening or convincing as a baddie. However Zabka notably took a real interest in the martial arts after the film was made and he kept it up, and throughout you can see how effective he is in the practice of the martial arts. Zabka's best scene is probably in the sequence where at the school prom (dressed in a ghoul outfit) Danny plays a practical joke on him, dousing him in water from a hosepipe fed into his toilet cubicle, to which Johnny soon chases and catches up with Daniel and beats him up saying "you couldn't leave well alone, could you? You little twerp! Well now you're gonna pay!". His final fight scene with Daniel is also pretty good, even though again he wears a pretty cheesy angry look as he prepares to fight him. Zabka also has a great little moment where during his final fight scene with Daniel, he has a timeout where he goes to his corner and Kreese says to him to "sweep the leg" i.e. Daniel's injured leg (during a previous round in the tournament) and Kreese angrily says "you have a problem with that?!" and Johnny looks shocked and says "no sensei". Its a great moment as Johnny realises how for Kreese this is more a personal victory over Daniel and Miyagi than a victory for Johnny.
And finally I will quickly mention Randee Heller as Daniel's mother, who puts in a rather corny and excessively cheery performance, who has the rather mortifying task of picking up Daniel and Ali for their date and dropping them off, only later on arriving just in time to embarrass Daniel in front of Johnny and his friends to slag him off for being picked up by his mommy. However Heller does share a good scene with Macchio when Daniel angrily throws his bike in a skip, as he has just been pushed off the road by Johnny and his classmates, and Daniel angrily says how much it sucks being in LA and he wants to go home to New Jersey.
Getting onto the direction, John G. Avildsen does a fine job here and he keeps the pace moving along nicely, and he does a great job in bringing the characters to life and making them endearing to an audience, also largely thanks Mark Robert Kamen's fine screenplay, which is both funny and charming. Bill Conti also provides a good score for the film and it has a fairly memorable theme used in the scene where Daniel practices out on the beach.
Flaw wise the film has one or two, the first one being that once again the film does feature some pretty cheesy 80s tunes, especially in Joe Espositos "You're the best" used during the tournament at the end of the film. Also as I mentioned, Johnny doesn't make for a very effective antagonist as he is morely just like a spoilt yuppie brat, with a ridiculous blonde hairdo, who fails to convince in his role as Daniel's nemesis. And the remake of the film years later with Jade Smith and Jackie Chan had a far more vicious young baddie who really kicked ass. You could also say the whole thing of Miyagi's pain suppression technique is a bit daft, particularly in how he can use it to reduce the pain of Daniel's leg injury during the film's final fight scene. Yet after Daniel goes out to fight he is still limping and despite during his fight with Johnny, Johnny injures Daniel's leg again, but somehow Daniel can still find the energy to stand up and fight on! I also thought the film's final scene (PLOT SPOILERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!) with Daniel triumphing in his fight, with Mr Miyagi looking on in pride and how they use that as a freeze frame shot to end the film was also pretty corny and cringeworthy. And surely they could have finished it in a better way than that, although John G Avildsen seems to like using final freeze frame shots to end his movies, just like he did in Rocky.
Anyhow all that aside, The Karate Kid is still a very entertaining and somewhat nostalgiac film (for me anyway!) which to this day is still the best of the three films, with Parts II and III (also directed by Avildsen) being still enjoyable but not in the same class as this one. And years later, the film was remade starring Jackie chan and Jade Smith (son of Will Smith) except the main difference being it was set in China, and Jackie Chan taught Jade kung-fu instead of karate, and for the most part it is almost a scene for scene remake of the original, but its still a good film as well in its own right.
So that's it for now.
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