The Karate Kid 4K 2010 Ultra HD 2160p

A new student—a teenager named Daniel—arrives at a school in Los Angeles. He moved there from the East Coast with his mother. It’s not easy to make friends in a new place where you don’t know anyone, especially at a school ruled by a brutal gang of karate experts. Despite their young age, the gang members are very dangerous. They call themselves the Cobras and brutally “sting” anyone they don’t like. Daniel ends up on their list of enemies after he meets the Cobras’ leader’s ex-girlfriend. The Cobras beat up the newcomer. Daniel craves revenge and at the same time wants to impress his new girlfriend. He turns to martial arts master Miyagi with a request to teach him karate.

User Review

Since we went to see the new "The Karate Kid: Legends" last week, we decided to check out the so-called first installment, simply titled "The Karate Kid", without further ado. We had missed it back in the day and never got around to watching it. Back in the now-distant year of 2010, Harold Zwart’s film appealed to audiences and managed to rake in more than a bag of chips at the box office. The film certainly has its merits, but 15 years later, if you’re watching it for the first time, it’s not exactly impressive, to put it mildly.

Will Smith didn’t spare his son, who became famous thanks to "The Pursuit of Happyness"; he paired him with Taraji P. Henson and decided to craft a heart-wrenching conflict about how hard it is for a young Black American boy in a foreign land—he wants to go home, his mother doesn’t hear him, so he has to fight for his happiness. And when that foreign land is communist China, it’s a lost cause. The Asians will surely be ready to devour poor Dre. Not literally, of course. In short, they invented an alternative China where they hate the Stars and Stripes.

To be honest, the odyssey of a simple kid from the ghetto suffering under communism didn’t melt our hearts. We don’t recall a single tear rolling down our cheeks. Jackie Chan is great as usual—there’s nothing to fault him for—and the role of the gruff mentor suited him well. They even wrote a deep tragedy for his character, giving the great stuntman a chance to showcase his skills as a dramatic actor. No doubt about it, he nailed it. And the idea with the jacket is so compelling that you start to really believe in kung fu.

But when you try to look at the whole story from above or from the outside, it raises some questions. Is there really a kung fu school in Beijing where children are taught not to spare their opponents and to finish them off? It would be one thing if some foreigner who didn’t give a damn about Chinese rules were teaching them, but no—some crazy old man was allowed to run the school, and as a result, the students simply spat on Eastern teachings about the importance of maintaining calm and not using such an ancient art for evil deeds. And they didn’t even shy away from setting others up.

Dre wasn’t even the first American kid to arrive in an unfamiliar environment. He was met by a level-headed blond guy who seemed to have smoothly blended into the local scene. But no, Dre is from the ghetto; he absolutely has to have a girlfriend, so it was just perfect that he took a liking to a cute little Chinese girl who wasn’t even the main villain’s ex in the script. It took some serious conviction, which is why they decided to build the conflict around forbidden love. The scene at the fair is so touching and intimate, with the puppet show...

The boy’s mother lives in a world of her own; I can’t recall any attempts on her part to have a heart-to-heart with her son and set him on the right path. Instead, Jackie Chan’s character becomes a surrogate father figure, having spotted something special in the boy, so he decides to set him up by entering him in a tournament where the top fighters actually compete. Naturally, Will Smith’s son will pull off the impossible, so the audience can cheer him on in the theaters. This is the kind of fairy tale that isn’t embarrassing to present to American audiences.

Movies about pushing the boundaries of the mind, where the impossible becomes possible, will always captivate viewers. After all, it’s a chance for an ordinary, simple-minded person to believe in their own strength and do what they’ve always feared in this life. From a motivational standpoint, this is great, inspiring, and passionate. But from the perspective of this specific film, the stories that stick with you are those that don’t rely on contrived plot devices to create conflict and barriers, which the protagonist then heroically overcomes. Check out "Peaceful Warrior".

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (65.2 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10+
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 7.1
#English: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Spanish (Latino): DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#Hindi: Dolby Digital 5.1
#German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1
#Russian: Dolby Digital 5.1

Info Subtitles

English SDH (PGS), Arabic (PGS), Bulgarian (PGS), Catalan (PGS), Chinese (Simplified) (PGS), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian (PGS), Czech (PGS), Danish (PGS), Dutch (PGS), Estonian (PGS), fil (Filipino), Finnish (PGS), French (Parisian) (PGS), German (PGS), Greek (PGS), Hebrew (PGS), Hindi (PGS), Hungarian (PGS), Icelandic (PGS), Indonesian (PGS), Italian (PGS), Japanese, Korean (PGS), Macedonian, Malay, Norwegian (PGS), Polish (PGS), Portuguese (Brazilian) (PGS), Portuguese (Iberian) (PGS), Romanian (PGS), Russian (PGS), Serbian (PGS), Slovak (PGS), Slovenian (PGS), Spanish (Castilian) (PGS), Spanish (Latin American) (PGS), Swedish (PGS), Thai (PGS), Turkish (PGS), Ukrainian, Vietnamese.