By Song Woong-ki

THE Smiths might be on the cusp of beginning an acting dynasty. Will and Jada's son Jaden turns in a star making performance in the reboot of "The Karate Kid" -- an inspirational family film both kids and fans of the original will get a kick out of.

The remake of the much loved but schmaltzy 1984 family film that popularized Karate as much as it ushered in a litany of jokes about its practitioners retains much of the inspirational charm of the original.

Jaden Smith echoes the young Ralph Macchio -- the star of the original.

He convincingly exudes both confidence and the social awkwardness that comes with pre-adolescents settling into a new environment.

However, this time around the film ups the stakes by taking Dre -- its 12-year old hero from Detroit -- to the Far East with his mom after she gets transferred to a Beijing auto plant by her American employers.

Dre's mother is played endearingly by Taraji P. Henson, even though her main role is to provide comic relief.

In the first film Ralph Macchio portrayed a New Jersey teen who moves with his single mother to Los Angeles.

By setting the story in modern-day China, the original fish-out-of-water plot becomes magnified, making way for a far more compelling drama.

Here, Smith turns in a convincing performance of a boy also struggling to adapt in a completely foreign world, where he can only communicate with hand gestures.

Immediately upon his arrival, Dre gets into a scuffle with a posse of local bullies led by its Kung-fu savvy leader Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) after he is spotted flirting with a girl Cheng secretly has a crush on.

The new version has almost the same structure of the original. Dre is constantly picked on until Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the apartment maintenance man, takes him under his wing to train him for a kung-fu tournament, where the young Dre and his nemesis ultimately meet.

Chan, popular for his action spectacles featuring stunts no sane man would ever take part in, is a revelation throughout the film.

Perhaps his best dramatic performance to date, his portrayal of a man haunted by personal demons is done with subtlety and restraint.

It's not a "look at me I can cry on screen" type of role some might expect from some of Chan's contemporaries of the 80s and 90s.

His dramatic chops might get fans wanting to see more of him in this kind of role in the future. This is to be expected as his face and physical stature shows clear signs of wear and tear from decades of stunt work.

And in films such as these, it is inevitable -- even required -- that there would be its fair share of training sequences. And this is where it is obvious that Chan is no longer the man who used to jump across sky rises without safety harnesses.

The obligatory training montages are done with epic scope featuring some breathtaking scenery shot around some of Beijing's key landmarks, such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and an almost ethereal Wudang Mountain where Dre learns to "control oneself."

As one might imagine after such romantic portrayals of the Chinese landscape, the film is a co-production with the state-run China Film Group and Columbia Pictures.

The former contributed a reported $5 million to the production's $40 million budget.

For years, Sony Pictures considered and then decided against re-launching the franchise as the studio had by then pounded the series into submission.

The third installment, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid" starred a 19-year-old Hilary Swank which was both a commercial and critical disaster.

So when Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment pitched Sony on a remake featuring Smith's 11-year-old, martial-arts-obsessed son Jaden, the studio remained unconvinced.

It was only when China was factored in just before the kick-off of the Beijing Olympic Games that the studio gave the green light, seeing the box office potential for an emerging Chinese film market.

There's more riding on the film than most people realize.

Although the film's production formed the biggest movie co-production between an American studio and China, it also conceded to government-mandated control of its content -- resulting in two slightly different cuts of the final version.

Chinese censors requested that several scenes, including sequences of bullying and a kiss between Dre and his Chinese love interest, be left on the cutting room floor.

But even without the Chinese government-enforced deleted scenes, the film's authenticity remains untouched.

-The Korean Herald/Asia News Network