Movie Review: Karate Kid: Legends

Posted on May 31, 2025 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio • Leave a comment

An ongoing theory about why movie sequels are so similar to the original movie is that producers are afraid to try something new due to the financial risk involved, because taking a chance on a new idea might hurt the box office because fans of the original might resent a major change to an iconic story idea from fourty years ago. The plot of the new movie “Karate Kid: Legends” is almost a carbon copy of the original Karate Kid(1984), the second Karate Kid (1986), and even the third Karate Kid (1989).

A young teenage boy Li Fong, played by Ben Wang, learns Karate under the mentorship of a teacher, and runs into a horrible bully who also knows Karate. There is a love interest, Mia Lipani, played by Sadie Stanley where the young boy falls in love with the former girlfriend of the bully, creating a great conflict and later a fight and that leads to a huge Karate tournament climax. This is the exact story behind just about all of the Karate Kid movies. The only new idea in this movie is that this time around Li Fong tries to train his girlfriend’s father Victor Lipani, played by Joshua Jackson, who owes money to the mob (more bullies), and Victor enters an MMA tournament to win money to pay off his debt. This storyline dies on the vine pretty quickly and seems more like an additional idea to make the runtime of the movie longer than any other reason.

This story starts in Hong Kong with Li Fong being forced to move to America because his mother is worried about losing another son to the violence that killed her oldest son. While living in Hong Kong, his Karate trainer is Mr. Han, played by Jackie Chan. Due to the tournament that Li Fong enters to help pay off Victor’s bad debt to the mob, Mr. Han travels to New York City to help Li train. Mr. Han then visits Daniel LaRusso, played Ralph Macchio in California, to convince him to come to New York City to help with the training. All fans who see the movie trailers and posters hoping that Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio are in this film a long time will be disappointed as they mostly appear in the last 20% of the film.

Some of the training of Li Fong is very well done, along with the final fight with Connor Day, played by Aramis Knight.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of a low 57% is understandable due carbon copy storyline, with my rating a passable 70%, mostly for fans of the Karate Kid movie franchise.

Movie Review: The Last Rodeo

Posted on May 24, 2025 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Neal McDonough, The Last Rodeo • Leave a comment

The new movie “The Last Rodeo” is about bull riding in the United States. From a search on ChatGPT, about the hazards of this sport in the United States:

With injury rates of 1440 per 1000 hours, bull riding is 10 times more dangerous than American Football and 13 times more dangerous than Hockey. These injuries include Contusions, Concussions, Shoulder, and Knee with 1-3 deaths annually. Most of these injuries happen during dismounts or when riders are thrown off and subsequently trampled or gored. Considering the insane popularity of watching someone ride a bucking horse or a bull, and the injuries, it is very hard to believe that Bull Riding is a viable sport anywhere in the world.

This story is about a long-retired bull rider, Joe Wainwright, played by Neal McDonough, who almost died from a riding accident many years earlier. Joe’s grandson Cody Wainwright, played by Graham Harvey, is gravely ill with a brain tumor and he then decides to enter a bull-riding contest to win money to pay for the complex brain surgery to save his Grandson’s life.

Joe reunites with an old friend Charlie Williams, played by Mykelti Williamson, whom he had not seen since his wife died many years earlier. The friendship between these two men is one of the best parts of this movie. At first, it looked like Joe would compete in the over-50 bull riding contest, but for reasons never explained, he winds up competing in the headline bull riding contest, where the prize money is 750,000 dollars.

The other good part about this story is the relationship between Joe’s daughter, Sally Wainwright, played by Sarah Jones, which is about the anger Sarah feels towards Joe and his decision to ride again, and what she had to go through when he was almost killed the last time he rode a bull.

The outrage over medical costs in this country and insurance companies, in this story paying only 40% of the total cost of life-saving surgery for a 10-year-old boy, has been a major backstory for many movies over the years, addressing the insanity of medical costs in the United States. With the high probability that this reality will never improve due to the years and criminal abuse that has existed for decades within the medical insurance industry.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for The Last Rodeo are a low 73%, mainly because there is nothing new or original in this story, with my rating a solid 75% and a moderate recommendation, due to the acting and the importance of the medical aspect of this story.

Movie Review: Fight or Flight

Posted on May 10, 2025 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Fight or Flight, Josh Hartnett • Leave a comment

The only obvious difference between the nonstop-seen-this-before action movie “Flight or Fight” is that all violent fights and action occur on a plane, with the additional insanity of a final fight scene that involves a chainsaw, even though there is no way a chainsaw would be allowed on a plane like this.

Fight or Flight stars Josh Hartnett as Lucas Reyes, an FBI agent on the bench, who is mostly sleeping and drunk in Thailand for two years, when he is called up to track down a criminal on a plane. About the time Reyes is about to board the flight, his team at the FBI realizes that just about everybody on the plane is a hired killer, setting the stage for nonstop fight and action scenes for the rest of the movie, without any regard to a coherent story.

The other issue with a movie like this is that with the beatings, stabbings, and shootings that Reyes takes during the many fight scenes, he would have died midway through this film. There is never any real reason to throw logic this far out the window, just to make an action movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Fight and Flight are a too high 77%, with my rating around 50% and a solid miss.