Why are so many films set in New York? We all have our favourite Big Apple movies—they certainly cover every conceivable genre. “Karate Kid: Legends” (Columbia Pictures), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, promisingly starts in both Okinawa, Japan, and China, but within a quarter of an hour we have been transfered to (guess where?) New York, for no apparent reason other than to make yet another film there.
The story is a coming of age adventure for Li Fong, a student and relative of Mr Han, a superhero martial-arts instructor, played by Jackie Chan. Li’s mother, played by Ming-Na Wen, moves him to New York with her as she starts a new job working at a hospital, and makes him promise to give up fighting for good. Initially Mum wins, but quickly Li becomes seduced by the debt-related troubles of the a owner of a pizzeria and by the charms of his daughter, Mia, and involves himself in their battles. At school, he fights in the playground with Mia’s ex, loses, but then trains in karate in order to enter a competition where he will have the chance of a rematch.
Choosing a set on a New York rooftop (for Li to learn how to fight) bears much fruit for the production design. As Li punches and kicks, under Jackie Chan’s supervision, the camera is placed on a 360-degree circle around the actors, an arc shot, which means that every direction of the New York skyline can be profiled behind them. It’s very effective, as is the camerawork generally, with plenty of tracking shots which tend to move horizontally, left-to-right. The fighting itself often reminded me more of dance, especially the group class (“jacket off/jacket off”) in the martial-arts school at the film’s opening. The scenes of New York which cut between human-actor scenes tend to involve subway trains or traffic on bridges moving quickly, again left-to-right, to generate a sense of momentum which remains throughout the film. It’s also an effective nod to the “city that never sleeps.”
Ben Wang does a first-rate job playing has Li. It is such a pleasure to watch a new actor find his feet, walking jauntily along the sidewalks with his hoodie and huge black headphones—he plays the teenager extremely convincingly. He is also given many moments to be funny; the timing of the delivery of his comedy lines is already very impressive indeed. Early on, for instance, when he has ordered a pizza, he is asked, “Anything else?” “Toilet roll,” he retorts, quick as a flash (Mum and he have just moved in). Or later on, when he is told to sleep with a teabag over his black eye, he jumps, “Green? Black?” He also gets to impress Mia by teaching her to negotiate locals’ discounts at a Chinese kitchen-spares store.
“Legends” is perhaps as much a teen-love fable as a movie about martial arts. First love, jealousy (try “he doesn’t deserve you, Mia, not just a little bit” for size), overreacting to every slight, reading far too much into everything, the disapproving father; it’s all there. Joshua Jackson, of Dawson’s Creek fame, plays the pizza guy and, while buffed up for the role, he is the wrong actor for the part. Casting an Italian star (to be the owner of an Italian pizzeria) would have provided richness and depth which is missing; and, indeed, Mr Jackson is largely replaced by Jackie Chan in the second act, after the master arrives in town to take charge. As he tells Mum, “it felt like the right time to visit.” I felt myself murmuring “100%.”
Mr Chan is a big enough star to pull in crowds and, a bit like an experienced chef cooking a dish they have made hundreds of time before, knows exactly how the play the role. The scenes of him coaching his son in the roof are outstanding—watching this particular master at work is a privilege. Alongside him is the original Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio, and the to-and-fro between the two is played nicely.
Of course it would not have made much of a movie if Mum’s directions to Li about promising to stop fighting had been heeded (and, predictably enough, Mum comes round in the end), but it is a strange message to send to teenagers—to flatly ignore their mother while worshipping the ground on which their martial-arts teacher stands. But this is Hollywood and that’s the way these films are written.
There are some quite funny lines, “low point of my teenage rebellion,” say, or “the Chinese Peter Parker,” or Li’s nickname, “Stuffed Crust,” but there are probably more weak ones, familiar from over-use in other such movies from the last four decades, “you always have a choice,” say, or “most people don’t know the moment their life changed forever.” And while the subway-turnstiles shots are fabulous and the rooftop sets are excellent, as is all the close-up fighting, the scenes training inside the carriages of the subway train are just odd, and the alley behind the restaurant where much of the action takes place isn’t convincing—perhaps Columbia used scenery stored in a warehouse left over from another New York movie. A little trick from “Marching Powder” (2025) of commentating off-camera in the style of punditry during fights is used here—equally successfully.
The film clocks in at around ninety minutes and watching the two generations of martial-arts actors, especially Jackie Chan and the flawless Ben Wang, raises this film above the humdrum script and predictable plot. And for a New York film, it holds up quite well. But next time, please, let’s stay in China. Although, somehow, I suspect that’s rather unlikely.
Adam Poole
15th June 2025
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