At The Movies: Karate Kid: Legends is charming in its corniness, The Ritual is beyond salvation
Karate Kid: Legends (PG)
94 minutes, now showing
★★★☆☆
The story: After a family tragedy, martial arts prodigy Li Fong (Ben Wang) leaves Beijing with his doctor mum (Ming-Na Wen) for a fresh start in New York City. She makes him promise no more fights, but he is a new kid in town facing bullies. Plus, he has a beloved four-decade lore to honour.
Karate Kid: Legends is the sixth film in The Karate Kid franchise dating from the 1984 Hollywood sleeper hit. It is the classic rite of passage of an outsider teen meeting a girl, Mia (Sadie Stanley), and attracting unwanted attention from her psychotic karate champion ex-boyfriend Conor (Aramis Knight).
Mia's dad (Joshua Jackson) owns the neighbourhood pizzeria. He was a prizefighter, and there is a cute bit of role-reversal, where Li coaches him for a comeback match to pay off his debt.
Li is otherwise the acolyte. Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan first played Shifu Han in 2010's The Karate Kid and returns as Li's revered mentor from China, while Ralph Macchio, the original Karate Kid, is now sensei Daniel LaRusso with a Netflix spin-off series Cobra Kai (2018 to 2025).
The two masters journey in to teach Li a hybrid of Han's gongfu and LaRusso's karate, which is the teen's only chance of defeating Conor in the inevitable climactic tournament.
Feature debut director Jonathan Entwistle brings together every past iteration for a remake-revival-crossover that is charming in its corniness, despite a formulaic story.
Beyond the nostalgia, it introduces an Asian hero. And 25-year-old Wang (American Born Chinese, 2023) is an appealing newcomer, who reclaims the martial arts tradition with his humorous and acrobatic moves.
Hot take: Part fan service, part generational update, there is much to like in this legacyquel.
The Ritual (NC16)
Al Pacino (right) in The Ritual.
PHOTO: SHAW ORGANISATION
98 minutes, opens on June 12
★★☆☆☆
The story: Two priests must overcome their differences and work together to free an innocent soul from the devil's grip.
Emma Schmidt is the most widely publicised case of exorcism in 20th-century American history and one of the few officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
An award-winning director of The Killing Of Kenneth Chamberlain (2019), another true account, David Midell researched the personal dairies, psychiatric evaluations and 1935 pamphlet Begone Satan! for The Ritual. Still, his dramatisation is like nothing so much as a parody of The Exorcist (1973).
Al Pacino at his hammiest plays the Capuchin friar Theophilus Riesinger, a glinty-eyed emissary of 'the Lord's Army' who arrives at a secluded convent in 1928 Earling, Iowa, to do furious battle with the devil. He has previous experience as an exorcist.
Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens) is the young parish priest reluctantly overseeing the detailed documentation of the 23-day ritual, the straight guy to Riesinger's crusty mystic. He advocates medical intervention even when Emma (Abigail Cowen) begins levitating, ejecting excrement and speaking in supernatural tongues, generally exhibiting every symptom from the religious horror playbook by week's end.
Riesinger chides Steiger for his lack of faith.
Their debate on science, spirituality and the human condition is without a single original thought or frisson, and the self-seriousness has only the unfortunate effect of making the glum proceedings all the campier.
'I have a sister with a torn scalp and another with a crushed hand,' Steiger reports of Emma's escalating violence. If the line does not elicit laughs, the sight of said nuns, huddled in petrified terror, surely will.
Hot take: This hackneyed demonic possession thriller is beyond salvation.
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