You have likely heard of Big Trouble in Little China, but have you heard of Showdown in Little Tokyo? Up until recently, I didn’t know this little action movie starring Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee existed. Lundgren is somewhat notorious for making lesser-known action movies that have something of a cult flair to them, but Brandon Lee is mostly known for the movie that tragically killed him. The handful of other films Lee took part in before his death often go overlooked, as this one has for me. However, having finally witnessed Showdown in Little Tokyo for myself, I have only come to realize that I had been missing out on something truly beautiful and stupid. I have found new meaning in my life with such a bizarrely dumb action movie.

Make no mistake, this movie is objectively bad. However, if you compare it to other Lundgren films like Dark Angel/I Come in Peace, or films like Dead Heat with Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo, you should have a pretty good idea of why I’m a fan of it. It’s a buddy cop movie, like so many others during this time trying to catch the lightning-in-the-bottle success of Lethal Weapon without ever reaching that balance of seriousness and comedy that would gain wide-reaching appeal. While I would argue that I Come in Peace has at least a few aspects of it in which the charm, characters, and writing work well, I think Showdown in Little Tokyo is missing a fair amount of that quality. Again, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it or that it doesn’t have charm. In fact, I think the parts that it’s lacking are why it might be more entertaining to watch as a result.

Plot & Thoughts

Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) is a renegade cop on a quest for vengeance. Trained in martial arts and raised in Japan, he witnessed his parents’ murder at the hands of the evil Japanese drug cartel boss Funekei Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). He’s been tracking Yoshida and his business dealings in Los Angeles for years and is finally closing in on him. He was busy kicking the crap out of Yakuza thugs in a local restaurant—something that I’m sure happens to Kenner every day—when his new partner Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee) showed up. Both claim to be the type of cop who “works alone” but neither seems too bothered to work together once their joint investigation starts. The only lead they have on the case assigned to them is the murder of a drug addict, so a majority of the plot mirrors the Lethal Weapon formula with a few mystery plot points sprinkled in between the action sequences. To be honest, I don’t remember the details about these discoveries because I was more distracted by the other quirks that are unique to the movie.

Showdown in Little Tokyo is not quite a trainwreck of a film to the level of amateurish passion projects like Samurai Cop or Miami Connection. It’s just full of moments that are either laughable or stunning in their stupidity that just made me shake my head in disbelief. In the opening scene of the film, Lundgren does a leaping kick over a car trying to run him down, which not only is pretty unbelievable on its own but looks even dumber when you note the “clever” camera placement to make it look like he’s doing a leaping kick over the car.

It’s not just Lundgren who gets to be ridiculous in this film, though. Brandon Lee’s character, Johnny Murata, is a raging doofus who is supposed to be the goofy sidekick to Kenner. Murata can do martial arts as well, so he’s not completely helpless. He just says dumb things at weird moments, makes goofy faces and gestures, and just seems like a weird character to have. In some ways, he’s a unique character for a buddy cop movie. Usually, when a cop sidekick is as comically odd as Murata is, they’re not very useful in a fight or action sequence.

What makes Murata such an odd casting choice for Brandon Lee is the dialogue he delivers. In fact, the writing and dialogue of this movie are just astonishingly bad. When you sit and think about the process of a film’s production, you have to acknowledge that someone came up with an idea for a scene or line in the script. Then, it had to pass by the eyes of numerous other people and get approved by someone. Then, it was actually shot and acted out. After that, a person took the scene and edited it, with the final cut of the movie being signed off by the director and producers. If you think about this whole process, it’s ridiculous that certain lines make it into the film, like what Brandon Lee says to Lundgren shortly after the brief sex scene that occurs towards the end of the movie—the sex scene was not between Lee and Lundgren, just to clarify. I won’t disclose what Lee says here, because I don’t want to spoil a moment that made me laugh for minutes.

When it comes to the rest of the 1990s buddy-cop formula, the movie does okay. The story itself is just your standard drug cartel against the two renegade cops willing to go around the law to get the bad guys. It’s as though the writers saw Lethal Weapon, and decided the way to make the movie edgier and more unique was to add a Japanese theme. If it were tastefully done, it would be fine. As you might expect, however, the filmmakers didn’t put in the effort or lacked the ability to be either self-aware or sensitive enough to get away with it. There is a line that suggests they think they accomplished this when Murata starts blathering about “anti-racism,” but it doesn’t land.

Despite the stereotypes, I still want to give credit where it’s due. Lundgren does speak some lines in Japanese and his pronunciation is pretty good. They also managed to get Japanese actors for a majority of the Asian cast, excluding Brandon Lee and Tia Carrere—who happen to be the two main supporting actors. Not to mention, having just read Ready Player One and found the author’s representation of Japanese culture rather repugnant, I have to acknowledge that the writers of this movie at least know what the hell Seppuku actually is. If you can get past the somewhat blatant stereotypes and laugh at them the way someone watching Chappelle’s Show might, you could find some humor in the absurdity.

In the end, I really couldn’t tell you the intricacies of the plot, details of the characters, or other specific qualities of the film, because I don’t really think there was much worth remembering in terms of a regular movie. I don’t think the movie is well-shot. The acting is pretty hammy. The action scenes are occasionally tense, but mostly come across as amateurish in their choreography. There are occasionally choreographed moments in which a dance number looks like it’s about to start. It’s good that it doesn’t because the people don’t seem completely in time with each other. There’s an awkward sex scene that is over quickly, thankfully. And there’s a moment where a man gets stabbed with a sword onto a spinning plywood disk that lights on fire and blows up like a faulty carnival attraction. In other words, it’s not a great film, but it’s got charm.

TL;DR

Pros

Filled with hilariously stupid moments that will make any fan of cult bad movies laugh
Almost satirical in its stupidity
Actual Japanese actors play a majority of the Japanese roles, despite the overtly stereotypical portrayal of Japanese people and culture
It’s less than 90 minutes long
All of these cons could be pros if you’re in the right mood and looking for dumb fun

Cons

Lots of choreography that was neither rehearsed all that well nor shot in a way that looks good
The same piece of the musical score is used over and over and at somewhat odd times
Brandon Lee is hilariously miscast and his character is so goofy,
Lots of spoofs and really dumb moments that only further enforce how you cannot take this movie seriously

Conclusion

If you are a fan of weird, cult, goofy action movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s trying to capitalize off the success of other, better films, Showdown in Little Tokyo is a good time. It’s not an exhilarating action movie, nor does it have any qualities of a high-brow good film. But it’s charming in its own offensive way with some ridiculous dialogue and hammy acting.

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