The Karate Kid’s Biggest Foe: The U.S. Auto Industry?

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The new Karate Kid hits theaters Friday, and at the center of this new action film is the tragedy of an American mother and son uprooted by economic chaos, kicked out of their home, their city, and even their country.

Reviews are just now starting to trickle in for Harald Zwart’s reboot of the 1984 original, and most critics already seem to agree that the exotic nature of the film’s locale, with the young American hero Dre learning how to live life in Beijing, all the while traveling to such sightseeing highlights as the Great Wall of China, gives the 2010 Karate Kid a distinctive, worldly texture.

But this transition from America to China is anything but easy for Dre. Early in the film, audiences learn that the boy’s mother has lost her job with a Detroit car company, and that traumatic ordeal has sent her scrambling for work, accepting a job all the way around the world. And when Dre starts griping about his ex-pat existence, saying he hates his new city and his new home, mom explodes in a teary tirade: “There’s nothing left for us back in Detroit!”

There’s plenty of kung-fu lessons in Karate Kid to keep it all fun. Jackie Chan’s a blast. But the parents in the audience might be surprised by the prominence of such a topical economic downer at the outset of this summer blockbuster. Dre, it turns out, is a hero for this era of the Great Recession.

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