Actors - The Karate Kid

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	Actors - The Karate Kid

The Karate Kid is a 1984 John G. Avildsen film starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita. It is a youth-oriented karate movie and an "underdog" story much in the model of a previous Avildsen smash, the 1976 boxing picture Rocky
. It was a massive commercial hit and retains a popular following to this day. It also garnered a favorable critical reception, even earning Pat Morita an Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Plot summary

The Karate Kid is about a teenage boy, Daniel LaRusso (Macchio), who moves with his mother from Newark, New Jersey to Reseda, California, in the San Fernando Valley district of L.A. The handyman of their apartment building is a kindly and humble Okinawan immigrant named Mr. Kesuke Miyagi (Morita).

The last night of summer, Daniel and his new friends, including Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue), are at the beach, when Ali's ex-boyfriend Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and his friends, pull up on motorbikes. Johnny and Ali begin arguing, and Ali blasts a radio. Angered, Johnny throws the radio to the ground. Daniel moves to pick it up, and ignores Johnny's warning not to get involved. Soon Daniel and Johnny fight, but Daniel loses. Unwittingly, Daniel has made an enemy of one of Cobra Kai karate dojo's best students. The Cobra Kai dojo preaches a sadistic, macho, and prideful form of martial arts, perhaps a symbolic representation of the "dark side" of martial arts.

Johnny and his cronies torment Daniel as much as they can. When Daniel retaliates with a prank at a Halloween dance (where Johnny is seen rolling and lighting a marijuana cigarette), he is pursued by Johnny and his friends, who proceed to beat him until he can barely stand. Just then, Mr. Miyagi intervenes and rescues Daniel in a surprising display of karate (stunt work by Fumio Demura). Daniel, upon learning this, asks Mr. Miyagi to be his teacher (sensei).

With some persuasion, Miyagi agrees to accompany Daniel to confront the sensei of the Cobra Kai dojo and insist that he tell his students to stop their harassment of Daniel. However, the sensei, John Kreese (Martin Kove), is a vicious fighter (later revealed in the sequels as a Vietnam veteran) who regularly barks out condemnations of mercy or restraint. To settle the matter, Miyagi announces Daniel will enter a Valley-wide tournament where Cobra Kai students can fight Daniel on equal terms (much to Daniel's surprise and chagrin). Miyagi also requests that Johnny and his friends stop bullying Daniel in the interim while the boy is trained. Kreese assents and orders his students to leave Daniel alone, but threatens that if Daniel does not appear at the tournament, the harassment will resume and Miyagi himself will be targeted as well.

Mr. Miyagi becomes Daniel's surrogate father, but Daniel is impatient and sometimes puzzled by Miyagi's teaching methods and behavior. For instance, instead of standard instruction, Miyagi initially has Daniel spend the day performing laborious chores (most famously, waxing the car) which he insists must be done with specific hand and arm movements ("Wax on, wax off"). Eventually, Daniel angrily confronts Miyagi about this labor and Miyagi shows him that in doing those chores with those movements, Daniel has in fact been subconsciously learning his defensive blocks, the vital first step in karate training. As the training continues, Miyagi instructs Daniel in such techniques such as the famous arms-spread-like-wings one legged kick to the chin called the Crane Kick. As the story and the training move on, Daniel learns from Miyagi not only karate, but also about life, and the role of such values as balance. This reflects the belief that martial arts training is about training of the spirit as much as the body.

At the tournament, Daniel is still an underdog, yet manages to progress through the tournament successfully. Kreese, intent on seeing his dojo succeed and his star pupil win the tournament, instructs another of his students in the semi-finals to perform an illegal attack that injures Daniel, seemingly to the point of making him unable to continue the competition. Miyagi has trained him well, however; in a final scene made in true Avildsen fashion, an injured Daniel, barely able to stand, beats his final opponent, none other than Johnny, by using the Crane Kick. At the end of the movie, Johnny acknowledges Daniel respectfully while Miyagi looks on approvingly.

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Actors - The Karate Kid

Plot summary

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