Il ragazzo dal kimono d'oro

With Italian genre film-makers always mustard keen to capitalize on financially successful film trends, the talented, opportunistic producer/director Fabrizio De Angelis formulated his very own blisteringly fight-packed, heroically headstrong hybrid of 'Kickboxer' and 'Karate Kid, setting his excitingly exotic, fleet-fisted, punch-fighting epic in picturesque manilla. Not long after sulky, estranged son Anthony Scott (Kim Rossi Stuart) arrives in the Philippines, the uneasy family reunion is further disturbed by fresh-faced Anthony's fateful barney with evil karate gangster Quino (Enrico Toralba), this grievous beating being the bloody catalyst which inexorably draws brave, unskilled fighter Anthony into the oracular orbit of sensei Kimura (Ken Watanabe), and before you can say 'Kumite', the white bread, piecemeal pugilist is thrillingly transformed into a steel-thewed, iron-fisted, majestically melon-mashing 'Karate Warrior' able to courageously meet the deadly Quino blow-for-blow in the climactic eye-of-the-tiger duel, wherein the once fey 'The Boy in The Golden Kimono' stoically fights not only for righteousness, but for his VERY life! Gifted exploitation impresario Fabrizio De Angelis's far-flung fight-flick is a bellicose, bloody-knuckled, blissfully 80s B-Movie classic!

I used to love this movie when I was a child, I used to compare it to karate kid but now that I'm watching it again I noticed all the differences, bad acting, terrible story.

This one tries its best to tie a story together. Does it work? Not really and our so called hero spends most of his time as a human punching bag. Also, a reclusive monk who ponders tranquility in a forest(?) is one that I've never seen in any Shaw Bros. film. The training scenes with casio background music are a highlight and yes, livestock will be harmed! A karate tournament is held in a boxing ring and it looked that the public was really getting into the movie. Honestly, it's hard to side with our "hero" and you can't blame Quino for blowing up after taking a foot to the groin. OUCH!! Unintentionally, the logic withing the dialogue seems flawed or maybe something is missing in translation. Otherwise, you're going to laugh at this low blow, B-grade karate romp.

Most people have seen the International, English dubbed, non-restored version. That version is forgettable. But having seen the new bluray of "Karate Warrior," in it's original Italian, (it's intended language), with the beautifully restored, widescreen print, it's quite different. Apparently when North American distributors bought the rights to this movie, they decided American audiences could only be entertained by a comedy. Because of that, the English dubbing, aside from being completely rotten, is also completely inaccurate. They changed what the characters were originally saying, dumbing it down with stupid lines and lame comedy. Seen in the original, the characters sound like real people, You also get to see some great photography of the exotic city of Manila. As a Martial Arts movie this isn't much, as there are barely any actual fight scenes to speak of, and actor Kim Rossi Stuart was obviously hired for his extremely pretty looks, and not his fighting skills. (He is shirtless for 80% of the film.) However, as a picturesque travelog, and as a standard exotic action-adventure film, "Karate Warrior" turns out to be an enjoyable film. It also serves as an example of how different a movie can appear once it has been restored to it's original quality. Sometimes it makes a big difference..

I guess you could boil it down to that, though to be honest there are far more things that are "wrong" with this copycat. Karate Warrior - what you can say in a positive light, the movie is not just an exact copy of Karate Kid. It does have a bit of a different story. It also is way more violent than the movie this based it's idea and "success" on.

And yes while this can not be considered a good movie in any way of the imagination, it was successful enough to spawn a few sequels (which I have not watched ... yet). So not having seen them I can't say if they are as muddled, have the same history when it comes to dubbing or "original" audio (which kind of doesn't really exist, everyone talking in their native language I assume, even if Italian is named as main language here) or the pacing issues.

If you don't mind the countless flaws and relish in the b-movie nature of it all (with surprises along the way, whatever that may mean), you can be quite entertained by this