The Karate Kid

John G. Avildsen’s 1984 film follows Daniel, newly arrived in Los Angeles from New Jersey, targeted by the Cobra Kai students and taught karate by Mr Miyagi, his building’s handyman. Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote it, had taken up Okinawan Gōjū-ryū after a beating at seventeen, under a teacher taught by the style’s founder Chōjun Miyagi. The chores are not a metaphor: by his account, waxing the car is a mid chest block, painting the fence a rising block, sanding the floor a downward block. Pat Morita was dropped at the outset over his comic work on Happy Days, then grew a beard, re-auditioned in an accent modelled on his uncle, and got the part. In the heaviest scene a drunk Miyagi says he served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and lost his wife and unborn child at the Manzanar camp. Morita was nominated for Actor in a Supporting Role at the 57th Academy Awards; Haing S. Ngor won for The Killing Fields. Avildsen shapes it as he shaped Rocky, which won him the directing Oscar. A good fit if you will watch the chores as a lesson with a named block behind each movement. Not for you if you expect the same of the final bout, since Kamen says the crane kick would not work.