The Karate Kid
The Karate Kid Preview
A martial arts master agrees to teach karate to a bullied teenager.
The Karate Kid Subtitle Japan
The Karate Kid
A martial arts master agrees to teach karate to a bullied teenager.
Daniel and his mother move from New Jersey to California. She has a wonderful new job, but Daniel quickly discovers that a dark haired Italian boy with a Jersey accent doesn't fit into the blond surfer crowd. Daniel manages to talk his way out of some fights, but he is finally cornered by several who belong to the same karate school. As Daniel is passing out from the beating he sees Miyagi, the elderly gardener leaps into the fray and save him by outfighting half a dozen teenagers. Miyagi and Daniel soon find out the real motivator behind the boys' violent attitude in the form of their karate teacher. Miyagi promises to teach Daniel karate and arranges a fight at the all-valley tournament some months off. When his training begins, Daniel doesn't understand what he is being shown. Miyagi seems more interested in having Daniel paint fences and wax cars than teaching him Karate.
User Review
I being a child of the 80's have a soft spot for this movie. Yes it is predictable,but what makes it a great movie is the performances by the 2 main characters. Ralph Macchio is great as a teenager that is bullied at his new school. But the movie belongs to Pat Morita as Mr. Myagi. He plays an old apartment maintenance man that befriends Macchio. He becomes his karate teacher, but they develop a great friendship that makes the movie all the more enjoyable. The great thing is that the movie shows that the old man comes to need the kid as much as the kid needs him, it is a touching relationship. All the rest is standard Rocky film stuff, but what Rocky and this film have in common is that the characters are people we care for, so all the climactic scene stuff works.
