Starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. Rated PG. Opens Friday, June 11.

It’s easy to imagine how a movie like this emerged. In an era of remakes, The Karate Kid seems like a defensible, even inspired selection, the Ralph Macchio/Pat Morita original being one of the great cheese classics of the ’80s. Wax on, wax off! Cobra Kai, do or die! Sweep the leg!

And so we have this new Karate Kid, produced by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who know a thing or two about crowd-pleasing mass entertainments. They also produced the star: their 11-year-old son, Jaden.

Whether by DNA or the guiding hand of director Harald Zwart, Jaden makes for a charismatic lead actor, his Dre Parker amply filling the role of pubescent fish out of water. In this version, the kid and his mom have moved from Detroit to China (mom is in the car business), and there he is bullied by vicious hooligans until he receives training from an unlikely master to compete in a full-contact martial-arts tournament.

There are significant changes, all to the film’s benefit.

First, reducing the protagonist’s age makes his plight more moving. Beatdowns on a 12-year-old are enraging—all the better to provoke the genteel blood lust that is the movie’s emotional tonic.

Second, the location work in Beijing is pretty spectacular. This is a consistently great-looking flick.

Third, with all due respect to the late Pat Morita, Jackie Chan is an actual martial-arts master, just hitting the age of playing the wise teacher. This is probably his best role in a Hollywood production, as the sympathetic protector with the moves of a bad-ass, the emblematic figure of the whole movie.