Underdog Kids
2015 film by Phillip Rhee
Underdog Kids is an American martial arts film directed by Phillip Rhee that premiered on July 7, 2015. It is Rhee's first film in seventeen years, after retiring from the industry in 1998 with Best of the Best 4: Without Warning as his last film. Having focused on both teaching and children's programming at the time, Rhee wanted to make a film geared towards kids and family that would be similar to his previous film Best of the Best.
Plot
At the Mid-County Community Center, a coach quits teaching a ragtag team martial arts. Community Center leader Charlie is looking for a new coach when former mixed martial arts champion Jimmy Lee, a protege of Charlie's whose career ended three years earlier after an accident, arrives. Reluctantly, he agrees to teach the group, consisting of Wyatt, Leticia, Raymond, Ricky, and brothers Alex and Sean, until he can work out an MMA comeback. At first, the kids are reluctant to learn from Jimmy and each of them is dealing with issues of their own, including poverty, bullying, desire for approval, and parental loss. However, Jimmy slowly warms up to the kids as he comes to recognize their need for guidance, and as he helps each of them with their issues, they slowly warm to him in return.
When Jimmy and the kids go to their first competition, Jimmy runs into his old childhood rival, Ted Barrett, who is the coach of the three-time national karate champions, the Beverly Hills Scorpions. Ted has held a grudge against Jimmy since they were young, and uses his current fame to influence others, despite the objections of his own son Eric.
The public source identifies “Underdog Kids” as 2015 film by Phillip Rhee. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Underdog, Kids and film.
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This entry incorporates text from “Underdog Kids” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.