Blu-Ray / DVD Release - THE KARATE KID (2010)

The Jaden Smith-Jackie Chan remake of THE KARATE KID is a high quality, intelligent enterprise, with just enough charm and good humour to get you through the two-hour plus run-time. But it lacks the effervescence of the original, and by making the Kid a twelve year old rather than a sixteen year old, the screen-writers have fundamentally altered the dynamic of the story. Thus, while the original KARATE KID is as much about getting the girl as it is about winning the tournament, in this remake it's pretty much all about the karate and the Mentor-Mentee relationship.

The story follows the original closely. A Kid is uprooted to a new town when his single mother moves to a new job. Immediately, he's singled out but the cool kids as a loser and beaten up, turning up to school on his first day with a black eye.  The bullying continues until finally he's bailed out by the janitor, who turns out to have mad kung-fu skills.  Except, this knowing rename tells us, it's not kung fu, it's karate. The janitor negotiates a truce with the bullies and their mean karate teacher - leave the Kid alone until all matters can be decided at a karate tournament. During the truce, the Kid does repetitive chores for the janitor, not realising that he's really learning mad karate skills, as well as how to respect his elders. And, obviously, when the tournament finally comes, the Kid gets the trophy and the chick, but most importantly, self-respect and a much-needed father figure.

If the story is basically the same, the look and feel of the film is very different. Nothing in director Harald Zawart's back catalogue (which includes the risible PINK PANTHER remakes) could've prepared me for his elegant portrayal of a long-haul flight, or his lush photography of the Chinese landscape. There's also a light touch in his handling of the pre-teen crush that the Kid has for a Chinese violinist that is entirely absent from Zwart's PANTHER movies or indeed the AGENT CODY BANKS flics. There's also a lot to like in the script from relative newcomer, Christopher Murphey. I like how he plays with our expectations for the film, and nods to our nostalgia for particular scenes. For instance, the first time we see Mr Chan, he looks like he's about to catch a fly with his chopsticks, the classic move Mr Miyagi pulled. But, no, Mr Chan, actually just uses a fly swat.  And while Mr Chan is repairing a car, Mr Miyagi style, the reason is quite different than in the original film. The source of Mr Chan's sorrow manifests itself tragically where Mr Miyagi's sorrow was darkly comic. And while Jackie Chan was more than able to convey that tragedy, I couldn't help but be relieved that he hadn't been asked to mimic Pat Norita's Oscar-nominated performance.

There's a lot to like in this remake. The film-makers clearly took a lot of time to work out how best to use the Chinese locations, and incorporate some small details that feel authentic - such as Chinese fascination with curly hair. Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith have real chemistry, and while we all know that Jackie Chan is a charismatic and sympathetic screen presence, Jaden Smith holds his own.

But there are problems with the film too. First, it is woefully sentimental, right from the opening scene. The Kid's best friend gives him his skateboard to take to Beijing. The Kid protests but the bet friend insists. Cut to the Kid looking out of the window as his best friend runs after the car in slo-mo. Please.  Later, we get to Beijing, and Jackie Chan has just given it his all, letting us into the reason for Mr Chan's sorrow. And what happens next? The Kid leads him out of himself with a device that is pure fructose syrup.  It totally brought me out of the moment, and out of the film.

Still, all this syrupy nonsense was more than offset by the film's earnest attempt to give us some insight into modern China, and the intrinsic charm of Chan and Smith. What really sunk the film was its closing scene. All of us who grew up in the eighties know how important the final two scenes of the film are. First, we get the Karate Kid defeat his opponent with a highly difficult, daring move that Mr Miyagi taught him. It shows his courage and self control and skill. Ralph Macchio totally pulls it off. But in this remake we get Jaden Smith have to pull of a hypnotic-cobra-type movie that looks utterly punk and ridiculous. I mean, seriously, it's one thing to train for balance and kick your opponent in the head. It's another to think you can move like a cobra and hypnotise your opponent into losing his guard! When the Kid started shifting his head from side to side I started laughing, and not in a good way.

Worst still, the final scene of the original film is arguably the strongest of all - it's the ultimate victory - but it doesn't even exist in the remake. In the original, sure, the little bully teenagers are vicious but basically they've been made that way by their mean teacher. The Karate Kid has a good teacher in Miyagi and so can defeat them, but the real battle is between two ways of teaching - two different ways of forming children. Accordingly, it is right and fitting that the final scene of the movie sees Miyagi face off against his rival teacher, beat him, but not with brutal force but with kindness. It is the ultimate victory of the Miyagi way.  But in this flick, there is no wider message. The Kid wins, the bullies acknowledge his victory, honour Mr Chan and it's game over.  It was just too simplistic and kid focussed - I wanted closure for Mr Chan too.

Am I being too harsh on the remake? Am I holding it up to an impossibly high threshold - the high bar of eighties nostalgia?  I hope not. I watched the original Karate Kid recently, when it was re-released on Blu-Ray, and the movie still holds up. It's still funny, romantic, tragic, heart-warming and wise, all at the same time. This new movie takes the production values to a new level, and does a genuinely good job of showing us modern China, and Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith are just fine. But I definitely feel the script-writers short-changed us with too much syrup, a too hasty ending, and too long a build-up in the first hour.

THE KARATE KID was released in summer 2010 and is available on Region 2 DVD and Blu Ray tomorrow.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: Keanu screws Klaatu

I'll admit a conflict here. I'm a big fan of the original 1951 THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. I'm not alone of course, as you'll see if you click on the link, the original movie is #199 on the IMDB Top 250 movies of all time. 

Of course, there's a reason for that. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) was an incredibly brave piece of cinema, coming as it did at the height of McCarthyism - challenging the rabid suspicion of outsiders and the dogma of the nuclear arms race. 

Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and his indestructible robot Gort come to earth to deliver a message of cooperation and peace to world leaders. Yet, immediately as he steps out of his spacecraft, Klaatu is shot, taken into custody, and branded everything from Angel of Death to evil communist. Yet he escapes, is helped by a kindly widow named Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), her son Bobby (Billy Gray) and a well known scientist, Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe).

Finally, he delivers his message outside of his spacecraft, which is worth re-printing in full:

"I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. 

We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more... profitable enterprises. 

Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you."

This speech has been debated and poured over since the film's release. Was it a stab at the toothless U.N. before it became fashionable to call it toothless? Was it an attack on the arms race and space race, being fought at the time against the Soviets? Was Klaatu actually meant to represent a religious figure - are there parallels to the Christian message?

Whatever the answers to these questions, it was certainly not pointlessly moralising, nor did it descend into feel-good shmaltz. The message was simple: "You guys are violent assholes. If you stop being violent, you can prosper and be happy. But if you turn your violence out into space towards us, our robot pigdogs will fuck you up."

The same cannot be said of the pointless modern remake. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008) lurches between paint-by-numbers Hollywood moralising about the environment and how we're screwing it up, to ridiculous levels of shmaltziness near the end. The message of this movie seems to be that humans have a soft and squidgy side that will come out in a crisis and that this will somehow manage to save us (from ourselves). This is despite copious evidence to the contrary played out in front of us throughout the film.

Now, don't get me wrong. One might well imagine that the (poorly acted and awfully scripted) love between a mother (Jennifer Connelly) and her unnecessarily black son (Jaden Smith) might convince Klaatu (Keanu Reaves) that human beings are worth saving. But surely it wouldn't convince him that we can save ourselves?! Not after the (equally poorly scripted) US Secretary of State (Kathy Bates) has unleashed seven shades of shit, torture and sidewinders on him and his unoffending robot for no good logical reason.

Talking about bad acting, let the record show that Reeves showcases the full repetoire of his monotonal potential in this flick. The scene with a catastrophically underused Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese) is a case in point. Cleese (the only competant actor in the film) looks like he's doing a bluescreen dress rehearsal next to a piece of wood. He delivers his lines as if he were trying to wake Reeves up, or at least trying to awake some extremely well hidden talent in him.

Mind you, Keanu doesn't have much to work with. He agreed to perform an (unintentionally) hilarious, monosyllabic script so as not to stretch himself - setting low standards that he consistently fails to live up to. The plot is similarly dire. Rather than perfectly pitching the low-key anti-communist paranoia of the 1950s - it goes for the catastrophism of the execrable I AM LEGEND and the similarly fecal modern remake of WAR OF THE WORLDS.  

All this adds up to a totally unnecessary money-spinning remake, arrogantly self-justified as some sort of environmentalist crusade. If you love cinema, love the original, or indeed have any of the human emotions that Reeves so conspicuously fails to imitate on screen, I would advise you to steer well clear of this garbage.

Cheers 

Maximus

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008) - An inconvenient remake

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was a lean, simple sci-fi movie about an alien in human form who tries to warn humankind against continuing on its destructive path. Released at the start of the Cold War, the movie had a strong agenda - against realist inter-state politics and for liberal internationalism as mediated by the United Nations. The movie also contained a lot of Christian imagery, with Klaatu as the saviour of humankind come down to earth to point out the error of our ways. The message was large and profound but it was made through argument rather than special effects. Klaatu - the alien - ponders the words of The Lincoln Memorial and debates politics with an eminent scientist. It was a remarkably quiet and thoughtful film.

The new remake is a rather different beast. For a start, it's replete with big-budget special effects and it's self-consciously grandiose. The message is also different. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) isn't here to save us from ourselves but to save the Earth from human-kind. Maybe in a post-modern world full of failing states and discredited supernational institutions, the film-makers thought appealing to liberal internationalism wouldn't fly? But it's a real shame. In the year of the Obama landslide, I could easily imagine a film that earnestly professed belief in the redemptive power of liberal democracy striking a chord.

The one constant is the Christian iconography - Klaatu walks on water, raises a man from the dead, and in a closing scene seems to take the agents of death out of the Bensons and into himself - thus taking away the sin of the world.

I rather like the bleak message and I also liked the special effects. But I didn't buy into the human relationships that power the plot. In the original film Klaatu strikes up a warm relationship between a single mother and her son who happen to live in the same boarding house as him. Through spending time with them he realises that humans have good qualities and deserve the chance to change. In the current movie I was never sold on the relationship between Klaatu, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith). Maybe it's because Helen is cast as a high powered scientist, and the relationship between Helen and her son is now rather complicated. Somehow it detracts from the relationship with Klaatu. At any rate, I didn't buy that in the course of a rather cursory relationship, Klaatu would change his mind about humanity.

So, for my money, stick to the original movie. Not least to avoid any fanboy disappointment at the omission of the most famous line of the original movie.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is on release in Belgium, France, Norway, Thailand, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK, the USA and Venezuela. It opens in Japan on December 19th; in South Korea on December 24th; in Australia on December 26th; in Egypt on December 31st; in Argentina on January 1st; in Brazil on January 9th; and in Poland on January 16th.