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Plot spoilers ahead
This movie struck me as very strongly pro-Chinese propaganda, and I wonder how much the script had been tailored for that market. Its message is essentially that Chinese discipline and purpose will always win against American indiscipline and raw thuggery.
A Chinese teenage karate enthusiast is forced to emigrate to New York after his mother accepts a job as a hospital doctor there. He befriends the daughter of a pizza shop owner, whose psychopathic ex-boyfriend (the archetypal cartoon character villain) is the local karate champion, and belongs to an organized crime gang from whom the girl's father borrowed money to open the pizza shop, which he cannot repay. If our hero can win a karate championship, the culmination of which, obviously, will require him to kick the living excreta out of the evil ex, he'll win enough money to pay off the gangsters and everyone gets to live happily ever after.
Woven into this are the hero being trained by his Chinese karate instructor (flown in from Beijing), a sub-plot in which the pizza shop owner is seriously injured in a boxing match and has to be treated in the hospital by the boy's mother (messaging: boxing is crude, thuggish, American, audiences delight in a participant being nearly killed, Chinese immigrant has to clear up the mess), and a scene in which the thuggish ex is training for the final fight, telling his instructor that "I'm not in it for the points ... I'm in it to kill!" The dramatic climax, which I won't give away, pushes home the message of Chinese cultural superiority.
The script, acting, direction, and visuals were all very competent. It was refreshing to see a movie in which most of the special effects were strictly analog (i.e. stunts), and also a mainstream move in flat (maybe because the karate moves would have been more difficult to stage in a wider frame?). But the propaganda in this movie is so in your face that it's impossible to consume it simply as a piece of entertainment.
Ugh - sorry - meant to put this in reviews rather than the tech info section. Brad - please could you move it?
This movie struck me as very strongly pro-Chinese propaganda, and I wonder how much the script had been tailored for that market. Its message is essentially that Chinese discipline and purpose will always win against American indiscipline and raw thuggery.
A Chinese teenage karate enthusiast is forced to emigrate to New York after his mother accepts a job as a hospital doctor there. He befriends the daughter of a pizza shop owner, whose psychopathic ex-boyfriend (the archetypal cartoon character villain) is the local karate champion, and belongs to an organized crime gang from whom the girl's father borrowed money to open the pizza shop, which he cannot repay. If our hero can win a karate championship, the culmination of which, obviously, will require him to kick the living excreta out of the evil ex, he'll win enough money to pay off the gangsters and everyone gets to live happily ever after.
Woven into this are the hero being trained by his Chinese karate instructor (flown in from Beijing), a sub-plot in which the pizza shop owner is seriously injured in a boxing match and has to be treated in the hospital by the boy's mother (messaging: boxing is crude, thuggish, American, audiences delight in a participant being nearly killed, Chinese immigrant has to clear up the mess), and a scene in which the thuggish ex is training for the final fight, telling his instructor that "I'm not in it for the points ... I'm in it to kill!" The dramatic climax, which I won't give away, pushes home the message of Chinese cultural superiority.
The script, acting, direction, and visuals were all very competent. It was refreshing to see a movie in which most of the special effects were strictly analog (i.e. stunts), and also a mainstream move in flat (maybe because the karate moves would have been more difficult to stage in a wider frame?). But the propaganda in this movie is so in your face that it's impossible to consume it simply as a piece of entertainment.
Ugh - sorry - meant to put this in reviews rather than the tech info section. Brad - please could you move it?
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