A light and sketchy 'Karate Kid'

  Notes about Karate Kid: Legends, a movie that's much like a book you skim rather than read.

 -- Jackie Chan, who appeared in 2010's The Karate Kid, has been cast as a kung-fu master who travels from Beijing to New York City (no tariffs involved) to bolster the spirits of one of his former students. At 70, a graying Chan shows his age but still holds the screen.

-- The filmmakers found an engaging young man -- Ben Wang -- to play the lead role of Li Fong, a kid who moves to New York City because his physician mom (Ming-Na Wing) has landed a job at a New York hospital. Li is free to roam the city with one caveat: Still shaken from an earlier family loss, Mom insists that Li not fight. Not fight? Yeah, right.

-- The movie quickly provides Li with a nemesis. Enter Connor (Aramis Knight), a tough kid and winner of The Five Boroughs Karate Contest. Connor seems to possess no redeeming qualities that might blur the sharp conflict on which the movie depends.

-- Director Jonathan Entwistle provides Li Fong with a guide who's meant to introduce him to New York City. Sadie Stanley plays Mia, the daughter of the owner (Joshua Jackson) of the neighborhood pizza shop Li frequents. Teen love blooms.

-- Chan's character passes along occasional wisdom, mostly at fortune cookie levels: "Chinese say, 'Friend's problem is my problem.'"

-- Eventually, 63-year-old Ralph Machio appears. The original Karate Kid is almost eligible for Social Security, but his character, Daniel LaRusso, still has moves.

-- A subplot in which Li trains the pizza shop owner to return to the boxing ring turns the tables on the formula:  The kid becomes the mentor.

    To summarize: The filmmakers try to freshen the formula with new faces and references to previous movies, including an early shot that includes the late Pat Morita, who played Mr. Miyagi in the 1984 original and in subsequence sequels.

     I don't know whether marital arts enthusiasts will take the movie seriously. The screenplay is based on Li's need to blend his already substantial kung-fu knowledge with the rigors of karate in what's referred to as the "two branches, one tree" school.

     Speaking of schools, Li is enrolled in a New York City school which the movie mostly ignores, aside from giving him a nerdy calculus tutor (Wyatt Oleff) who provides good-natured comic relief.

     The only thought I had about any of this is that the movie seems to make thought irrelevant as it builds toward a climactic final fight on a Manhattan rooftop.

      At 94 minutes, Legends doesn't overstay its welcome, but a weak script puts too much pressure on Wang's engaging performance. As it unfolds, the movie becomes increasingly reliant on whatever affection the Karate Kid formula still generates.

     

     

Jackie Chan hits a somber note

The Foreigner pits Chan's character against a former IRA man played by Pierce Brosnan.

No one has made martial arts feel more joyous than Jackie Chan. Throughout his long movie career, Chan has been involved in some of the most intricately brilliant fight scenes ever filmed, many of them choreographed in ways that tip over into physical comedy.

One assumes that the always likable Chan, now 63 and perhaps past the point where he wants to risk more injuries, may not be able to continue at the bruising pace he once set. So it's hardly surprising to see Chan taking another tack in director Martin Campbell's The Foreigner, an adaptation of an insensitively named 1995 Stephen Leather novel called The Chinaman.

In The Foreigner, Chan's work takes a somber, determined turn as he plays a London father whose daughter is killed during a bombing by a group that identifies itself as a new incarnation of the IRA. Having given up his career as a hitman, Chan's Quan Ngoc Minh resumes action, setting out to avenge his daughter. Quan's mission of revenge brings him into the orbit of a former IRA man now serving in the government, Pierce Brosnan's Liam Hennessy.

Quan believes that Brosnan's character knows who's responsible for the London bombing. Having gotten nowhere with British counterintelligence agents, Quan insists that Hennessy name names. If the law won't provide justice, Quan will get it for himself.

It takes time for Chan to reveal his character's lethal side. Quan bows when he meets people and generally presents himself as an obscure restaurateur who runs a London takeaway joint. Few know that Quan was raised in Vietnam, where he was trained by US special forces. As a result, Quan knows how to build bombs and kick butt. He can commit to a mission with unrelenting persistence.

Quan heads to Belfast, following Hennessy to his country estate. There, Quan steadily raises the ante by setting off a series of increasingly powerful explosions. Meanwhile, Hennessy must deal with his angry wife (Orla Brady), the British government bureaucracy and a variety of other problems, including the ire of an IRA man who believes Hennessy has sold out men who once were his bothers in arms.

Chan vanishes for long stretches as Hennessy's intrigue-laden story moves toward center stage.

Campbell treats the material more as a political thriller than a martial arts display, and the whole package winds up as a hard-boiled entertainment that's not afraid to strike at point-blank range even if it doesn't quite manage to earn credit as more than another darkly hued movie shot through with the customary bitter undercurrents.