By Robert Scucci
| Published
Confession time. I only just now gave Showdown in Little Tokyo a proper watch because I’m lazy, and it’s not streaming on any of the platforms I subscribe to. I host a bad movie podcast with one of my best friends from middle school, and we spend our time railing on bad movies. My co-host absolutely despises The Crow, while I’ve written about the 1994 masterpiece on this site multiple times because it’s the best revenge movie ever made. In an effort to antagonize me, he suggested we review 1991’s Showdown in Little Tokyo, which, despite its 33 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, is just another Brandon Lee masterpiece that I now need to make sure everybody watches because it’s just that awesome.
Until this past weekend, The Crow was my only Brandon Lee reference point, and now I’m bummed out because had he lived through The Crow’s production, he would have been one hell of an action star who would have smoked the competition. This movie has everything you’d ever want to see in a buddy cop comedy, and it’s all thanks to Brandon Lee’s charisma, along with his chemistry with Dolph Lundgren.
Buddy Cops Gonna Buddy Cop
Showdown in Little Tokyo is the ultimate odd-couple comedy once you’re introduced to its protagonists. First, we have Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren), an American who was raised in Japan and hates American culture. His new partner, Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee), is an American of Japanese descent who doesn’t care much for tradition. They’re both martial arts experts, and they’re both tasked with taking down members of the Iron Claw yakuza clan operating out of Los Angeles.
Here’s where it gets personal. Chris recognizes the leader of this very clan, Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), as the man who killed his parents when he was a child. To complicate matters, Yoshida is a ruthless crime lord who plans to distribute methamphetamines through a brewery he’s using as a front. Ready to kick ass and take names, Chris and Johnny throw hands, empty magazines, and fight their way through Yoshida’s henchmen.
Along the way, Chris falls for a lounge singer named Minako (Tia Carrere), who’s caught between her career and the criminal world surrounding it, and of course this adds another layer of complications to the premise. Not only do we have a revenge arc, we’ve got a damsel in distress who’s instructed to “shoot anything she sees moving” seconds after being taught how to hold a shotgun.
A Boilerplate Plot Elevated By Its Charismatic Leads
If you’re a fan of the Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, and Rush Hour franchises, you’ll find that Showdown in Little Tokyo follows all of the same beats, and its storyline is pretty standard. Two guys who shouldn’t stand each other are forced to work together to take down the same bad guy. Nothing new to see here. But within this framework, you get some of the most effortless chemistry you’ll ever see between two leads in this genre. Dolph Lundgren had already established himself as an action star, but this was Brandon Lee’s first major American film role in the United States. He’s so confident from the moment you’re introduced to him that you’d think he had been operating at this level for years.
The one-liners between Lundgren and Lee are corny by design, and you can tell they both understand it’s on them to carry the show. I’m not trying to throw shade at writers Stephen Glantz and Caliope Brattlestreet, or director Mark L. Lester, but the actual story in Showdown in Little Tokyo is about as unremarkable as it gets. It works because you can feel its leads winking at the audience, even if they’re not literally doing it. There are plenty of jokes about how well-endowed they are below the belt, and every exchange lands with a smirk.
When lines like “You have the right to be dead,” and “There are more bad guys than we’ve got bullets” get thrown around by Brandon Lee, right before Dolph Lundgren arms himself to the teeth with swords and daggers, it’s obvious you’re not supposed to take movies like this too seriously. You’re supposed to sit back, let the stars chew the scenery, and watch them start blasting.
Showdown in Little Tokyo delivers this in spades, and it’s a shame that it’s currently hidden behind a paywall. Having thrown down four dollars for this one for research purposes, I don’t regret the rental. If you’re a fan of Brandon Lee, Dolph Lundgren, or buddy cop comedies in general, just know that this one has earned its keep as a cult classic and is worth the purchase. And then you can weep over the fact that we could have had so many more Brandon Lee action movies if his other masterpiece didn’t claim his life.
Showdown in Little Tokyo SCORE
As of this writing, Showdown in Little Tokyo is available on-demand through YouTube, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Fandango at Home.
