Showdown in Little Tokyo
by Mark L. Lester
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DVD details
Actor: Brandon Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Dolph Lundgren, Tia Carrere, Toshir? ObataDirector: Mark L. Lester
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 78 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-11-10
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Showdown in Little Tokyo
DVD Review: Cult classic starring Dolph Lungren and Brandon Lee
Summary: 5 Stars
Macho B-movie madness at its sublime best, this crazy action quickie is about as brain dead as you can get: wooden acting, a terrible story and a script that truly sucks. But with all the mindless violence who really cares. Gun battles, martial arts, Samurai sword slashing and gory deaths are the order of the day, not to mention plenty of beautiful ladies treated like playthings and shedding clothes at every opportunity. Despite the women and guns, there is some kind of story: Kenner (Lundgren) is on a mission of vengeance. His parents were killed when he was little by crazy Yakuza thug Yoshida (Tagawa), an ice-cool super-villain now specializing in drug dealing and generally looking mean. Kenner, adept in the Samurai ways, grows to be a law-abiding copper who's now right on his tail. Male bonding ensues when policeman Johnny Murata (Lee, in his US debut), a hip-talking dude with street credentials, is assigned as Kenner's partner in crime, and all hell simply breaks loose. You could say that there's an artistic angle to all this fighting, shooting and banging, but then that would be a lie - Showdown in Little Tokyo is a classic in a completely different sense of the word.DVD Review: So bad that it's almost good
Summary: 2 Stars
Showdown in Little Tokyo is one of those generic action movies from the early 90's that is so bad that's kind of enjoyable to watch as trashy entertainment. What makes it even more enjoyable is the fact that it stars a young Brandon Lee as a wise-cracking cop who teams up with a tough guy cop (Dolph Lundgren) to take on a Yakuza drug boss (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Showdown in Little Tokyo features atrocious (and occasionally funny) dialogue, tons of cliche story elements (the bad guy also killed Lundgren's parents when he was a child), sloppy editing, and a training montage to boot! Tia Carrere has a thankless role as a damsel that gets wooed by Dolph, and the action and fight scenes are a mix of sloppily put together (the concluding fight during the parade) to well choreographed (most of Lee's sequences). All in all, Showdown in Little Tokyo should be unbelievably bad, but it has a sense of charm about it's comic book-style mayhem, and seeing Brandon Lee work his magic (there just isn't enough of him here) is reason enough to see this flick.DVD Review: "You have the right to be dead"
Summary: 5 Stars
Showdown in Little Tokyo is one of those rare early-90's screen gems that is so terribly scripted that, today, it makes for one of the funniest movie going experiences you can have.
Essentially it's a revenge story where Dolph Lundgren plays a cop out for revenge against the yakuza mob boss who murdered his family when he was just a wee little gaijin living in Japan.
And of course, since he was raised in Japan, he knows martial arts, how to weild a sword and even build japanese style houses by hand (I'll get to that later in the review). Seeing as how he posesses all of these great combat skills, it's no wonder that Lundgren's character ended up becoming a cop in Los Angeles.
Soon Lundgren meets up with his new partner, played by Brandon Lee in one of his first major movie roles, the son of a dentist who grew up in "the valley" who also happens to know karate so naturally he became a cop as well.
Together this dynamic duo takes on the yakuza, who all wear great stereotypical early-90's attire that makes them look like they just stepped off the set of a Phil Collins video or the Arsenio Hall Show. Some of them even wear the exact same suits in the same scenes which makes them look like updated versions of the henchmen from the old 60's Batman TV show.
Some of the most fantastically ridiculous action scenes take place from there including Lundgren lifting a car onto its side with his bare hands, a hilarious bathhouse fight scene with a fat japanese guy complete with a Wilhelm scream and of course a scene in which the two heroes fight off 50 bad guys trying to invade Lundgren's japanese style home. That's right, he built it his self, we learn that when Tia Carrere's character says "Nice house," and Lundgren says "I built it," and Tia says "Somehow I knew that."
And that brings me to my next point, the awesomely horrible and incredibly funny dialog that the stars of Showdown in Little Tokyo have to belt out is so head-scratchingly awful that you have to ask yourself questions like "what was the writer thinking? are they for real? are they TRYING to be hilarious?"
I could spout off any of the hundreds of hilarious lines from this movie, but it's so much fun watching it yourself and laughing at them that I won't. Ok, maybe just one. Brandon Lee's character actually says to Lundgren "In case we die, I want you to know that you have the biggest d*** I've ever seen on a man," to which Lundgren says: "I don't know what to say." Well neither do I guys, neither do I.
Showdown in Little Tokyo, whether it was intentional or not, stands as a comedic masterpiece in early-90's cinema. I'm not exaggerating either, it really is freaking hilarous, see for yourself.
DVD Review: Brandon Lee and Dolph Lungren Together!
Summary: 5 Stars
Amazing movie! One of Dolph's greatest roles ever! Brandon Lee brings charisma and humor to his role as well.
This is a five star movie-
DVD Review: Fun & Action In No "Little" Amounts
Summary: 4 Stars
Never having been much of a fan of either Dolph Lundgren or the late Brandon Lee, it was only my general like of action films that drew me to their collaborative effort, "Showdown In Little Tokyo". I ended up liking the movie than I had hoped, but while I had a good time, it's a film that won't especially attract folks outside of a given fanbase.
Like most good action features, the story of "Showdown" is merely a backdrop to the on-screen antics: Lundgren and Lee are two San Francisco detectives set to take down a Yakuza cell planning to distribute a dangerous new drug across the country; the gang is headed by the tattooed and cold-blooded swordsman Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, "Mortal Kombat"), who is responsible for the deaths of the parents of Lundgren's character.
On the surface, everything works fine: the action - served liberally - is standard early-90s fare, with both Lee and Lundgren getting to show off their martial arts inbetween some fun gunfights; Tagawa as Yoshida and Toshiro Obata ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles") as his no-nonsense second-in-command are effectively lethal and hiss-able; and the pacing is swift and to-the-point, with few slow-downs.
Close inspection, however, reveals the film to be noticeably flawed: in addition to the silly dialogue and useless romance angle between Lundgren and Tia Carrere ("Relic Hunter"), multiple mistakes in production (smeared tattoos, obvious dummies, etc.) are only overshadowed by how often Lundgren is near-naked, culminating in a laugh-out-loud scene where the bodybuilder jogs through a junkyard wearing only tight-fitting shorts.
Also, the characterization of Swedish-born Dolph as an student of Japanese culture, while Bruce Lee's son is an Asian-American who just happens to know martial arts, is a bit too silly and ironic for even me to take.
The movie, however, has one indispensable thing going for it that allow its flaws to be ignored: it's pretty darn fun. Neither the story nor the actors are bogged down by delusions of seriousness, and the director's willingness to suspend disbelief for the sake of an adrenaline rush is sorely missed in most modern features.
Chances are, if you enjoy action films of the given era or specifically of Lundgren and Lee, "Showdown" will be a treat for you; but if you like your shootouts and kung fu to be intellectual, keep searching.
Description of Showdown in Little Tokyo
Showdown in Little Tokyo is a 1991 martial arts action-comedy that, in pitting Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee as L.A. cops against Japanese drug dealers, plays like a B-movie Tango and Cash or Lethal Weapon 2 (both released just two years before). Between career highs in Rocky IV (1985) and Universal Soldier (1992), Lundgren looked as if he might make it big at the box office, and clearly wanting to be the new Schwarzenegger he is here directed by Mark L Lester, who had earlier helmed Ah-nold's Commando (1985). In the event both actor and director headed for straight-to-video territory, while Lee (Bruce's son) went on to The Crow. The 75-minute running time suggests the studio lost confidence and seriously cut the movie though, as the space between the action is filled with nothing but cringe-inducing dialogue, thriller clich?s, and Lundgren "romancing" Tia Carrere, it still makes sense. Basing its title on John Carpenter's 1986 fantasy-comedy Big Trouble in Little China and anticipating Rush Hour (1998), Showdown in Little Tokyo alternates between crude tongue-in-cheek moments and action so ludicrous it's unintentionally hilarious . A camp disaster that simply defies belief, this is so-bad-it's-good entertainment. --Gary S. DalkinCrime DVDs
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