The Reluctant Hero

Hank Thompson is a former star baseball player with a big love for the (New York) Giants, who works in a bar in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Hank calls his mother, who lives on the opposite coast and shares his Giants fixation, a LOT. He has a drinking problem and nightmares from the self-made drunk driving accident that killed his unbuckled best friend and ruined his sporting career. In other words, he has a conscience. He also has a beautiful, sexy, and loyal girlfriend named Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz). I'll overlook this trope; this is clearly not about women heroes. Yvonne gives Hank space to become the best version of himself. That she is killed for his role in helping him, despite his continuing lack of commitment, and before he can pledge his undying love to her, is the spark that sets Hank's character up for a trajectory into a book trilogy.

Mr. Miyagi is an aging Japanese kung fu master who works as a handyman in an apartment building in a diverse (low-income) neighborhood in Los Angeles. He is sensei to a persistent and sincere martial arts student (Danny, an Italian American living with his widowed mom in Miyagi's building). In KKI, Miyagi helps Danny deal with a bully who is the jealous ex-girlfriend of Danny's crush. In KK II, Miyagi goes home (a fishing village in Okinawa), for the first time in his 40+ years as an immigrant, to see his dying father. He agrees to let Danny accompany him. Miyagi confides to the curious and insistent Danny details of his tragic love affair with Yukie. Yukie was supposed to marry Miyagi's best friend, Sato. But she preferred Miyagi. This was what caused Miyagi to leave Okinawa (it was a matter of honor). Please help me overlook this trope, too. 

Sato, the Friend who Bullies

There is a culture of honor in Japan (and other countries, but this is not a history textbook).  According to textbooks, this is in part due to the influence of Confucian values, which emphasize loyalty, duty, and social harmony. Aspiration to these values manifests in societal behaviors such as symbolic shows of respect for certain groups (example, the elderly) and classes (authority figures) of people, and a collective mindset of not wanting to let others down. In the case of Sato and Mr. Miyagi, who were best friends from childhood, this culture led to their estrangement due to a rigidly hierarchical approach to man-woman relationships. 

I'm going to try to explain this as if you were a child. I do not mean to talk down to you (in my own hierarchy, children rank very highly). 

Sato was supposed to marry Yukie, but Yukie and Mr. Miyagi loved each other. Yukie did not love Sato, so she did not want to marry Sato. She wanted to marry Mr. Miyagi. But because of the laws of honor, her destiny was bound to Sato, and their friends and neighbors all expected she would get married to him; it was the "right" thing to do in their opinions because nobody wanted to let down Sato, or go against the traditional customs which they felt preserved their society, keeping them safe and prosperous.

Mr. Miyagi himself did not want to let down Sato, who was his very good friend. In order not to let down Sato, Mr. Miyagi had to leave his home country so that the marriage of his love to his best friend could happen as expected. (Yukie could not bear to marry Sato while Mr Miyagi was around.) He (or Yukie) could also have chosen to commit suicide, which in traditional Japanese/samurai culture was at least tolerated if not seen as an honorable choice in certain situations. 

So when Mr. Miyagi went to live in the U.S., he did not try to contact Yukie. He assumed she had married Sato. Meanwhile, Yukie decided not to marry at all. I am glad she had the choice because I have an idea what it is like to be married to someone you did not choose to marry with your whole heart. But Yukie's choice dishonored Sato even more. Her absence from his life was a constant reminder to the whole town that he had been dishonored by the two people who should have behaved the most honorably towards him. His nephew (Chozen) was also a big disappointment. Chozen was heir to Sato's family heritage because Sato had no sons of his own. Chozen was not an honorable person. He was a bully and a cheat, but Sato had raised him to be like his own son, so he had to tolerate Chozen's bad behavior, at least within certain limits. Sato's life was filled with dishonor. He was very unhappy. He forgot what it means to love.

The Crooked Cop, the "Twins," et al

Unlike Karate Kid II, there were a lot of bullies from different families in Caught Stealing. I will focus on two. The first is Detective Elise (a form of the name Elizabeth, as in Queen Elizabeth) Roman, the attractive Black policewoman who is investigating the attack by the first set of bullies who chased and tortured Hank to obtain information on his drug-dealing friend and neighbor. There is much honor in this story, too; forgive me as I keep coming back to it. 

Detective Roman is an authority figure in this story. I do not believe she was accidentally named Elise Roman, but you are not a child, so I will not tell you what those names mean to me or what they might mean to the original teller of this story.

As Roman interviews Hank, she is very polite, but she questions him as if he were a suspect in the case and not the victim. As she talks to Hank, she is watching him closely, as a good detective should, for any signs that he is lying. Our reluctant hero is innocent, which shows on his face.  He keeps asking Roman if she is kidding, because he can't believe she would think him capable of doing the things she is suggesting he might have done. Of course, a detective knows that people are usually very adept at lying, especially criminals, and most especially the ones who are not yet in prison for their crimes, and she keeps on questioning his honor, saying, "You never know what'll pop." 

This was possibly my favorite scene in the movie, that first encounter between Hank and Roman. It was a turning point for our hero, who later used the same techniques he observed her use to trick her into letting something "pop."

The "twin" bullies in Caught Stealing (Lipa and Shmully Drucker) are portrayed by actors Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio, respectively.  They are not twins, but they look and dress alike because they are Hasidic Jews, and because the actors do not look very much alike and are not Hasidic, they wear identical (to me) sets of false hair, which makes them look much more alike.

Note: In the original novel by Charlie Huston, the equivalent characters were not Hasidic. The change was made for the film adaptation directed by Darren Aronofsky (whose parents were of Polish-Jewish descent). 

The surname Drucker has an interesting meaning with respect to these twin/copycat characters. Look it up if you like and tell me what you think. It's important to note that historically, Jewish gangsters in New York came from poor, secular immigrant backgrounds, where they turned to crime to get ahead. The Hasidic community, by contrast, is known for its strict religious observance and insular social structures, which are generally incompatible with a life of organized, violent crime.