SUMMARY: Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee star as two mismatched L.A. cops who must go up against the Yakuza. Basically, the best film that Cannon Pictures never made.
Stick around until the end of the recap for a special video of highlights from Showdown in Little Tokyo!
Now here’s a real gem of a B-movie. A cheesy, trashy buddy cop film with absolutely no filler whatsoever, to say nothing of any redeeming social value. Dolph Lundgren and the late Brandon Lee play a couple of L.A. cops who are after the Yakuza, led here by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Yep, that’s about it. There’s very little in the way of exposition or characterization; Hell, there isn’t even an obligatory pissed off police chief!
It’s a sleek 78 minutes of action (you read that right), blood, and gratuitous nudity, and no one in their right mind could call it good. In fact, it’s pretty damn bad on all conceivable levels, but it’s just entertaining as all hell. I give it 8 out of 10 Swedish Samurais. Let’s check it out.
Highlights:
1. We begin with the opening titles, which play over images of a very well muscled body with intricate tattoos. And if you think this is a bit homoerotic, just wait. After this two and a half minute tribute to the male form, the film proper starts in Los Angeles, at an underground fighting competition. The fight club has been infiltrated by our hero, Kenner, played by Swedish strongman Dolph Lundgren. Lundgren has had an interesting career to say the least, beginning with a cameo in the James Bond film A View to a Kill, which led to him being cast as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
Other roles in lesser films followed (and considering the quality of Rocky IV, that’s quite a statement), like Masters of the Universe, Red Scorpion and The Punisher. Eventually, Lundgren would end up where most action heroes go to die: Direct to Video Hell. Lundgren has made the best of it, though. Possessing an impressively high I.Q. and also being not as much of a dick as Seagal and Van Damme has led to a relatively decent career in low budget action films. All in all, he’s a rare success story in the world of second-tier action heroes.
2. A convertible carrying five bad guys pulls up, and I get a kick out of the one dude who hops out rather than opening the door—gotta love macho for the sake of looking cool. The five guys enter the arena, and Kenner suddenly swings in like Tarzan, landing in the middle of the ring. No preamble or anything, we just cut to the chase here, folks. Making it even odder is that the crowd doesn’t seem all that bothered by a gigantic dude swinging in on a rope to disrupt things.
3. Kenner calmly confronts the guy in charge, Tanaka, who tells the two fighters in the ring to take out Kenner. Another guy places a bet on Kenner, and that kicks off our first action sequence. It appears that Kenner is hard to hurt, because one punch from a fighter does nothing but piss him off.
4. The five guys from the convertible suddenly open fire with machine guns. This finally gets a reaction from the crowd: Namely, blind panic, which you’d think Kenner’s entrance would have set off, but I guess they’re used to that sort of stuff by this point. A brief shootout ensues, and the bad guys make an easy escape.
So, how much do you think van Damme gets in royalties for this?
5. The first priceless moment of the movie comes when the bad guys are escaping, and Kenner chases them on foot. They drive right at him while he fires his gun, and rather than leaping out of the way, he leaps over the freaking car! Not in the rolling over the hood sense, either. I’m talking a Superman leap with a perfect landing that would guarantee a gold medal in the Olympics if leaping over cars ever became an event. So, right off the bat, you can pretty much tell that any sense of reality is not going to be found here.
6. Cut to the next day, as Kenner has breakfast in a Japanese restaurant, flirting with the owner (Takayo Fischer, who in a weird turn of events, is the actress who voiced Ms. Bisby on the Mr. T cartoon). As luck would have it, the bad guys in the convertible drive up and enter the same establishment. They approach the owner and try to get her to agree to pay protection money, which goes about as well as these sorts of things tend to go. Kenner approaches, and while still holding his coffee cup, he disarms one of the goons. He pushes them around a bit and then gives them a warning.
Kenner: If I don’t get breakfast, I get real grumpy. I don’t think you’d like me grumpy.
He punctuates this by starting a fistfight, which of course demolishes the place. So really, the owner would have been far better off just paying the protection money than getting “rescued” by Kenner.
Brandon Lee just got a good look at the suit he’s wearing.
7. One guy gets kicked through the front window, and just happens to fall right in front of Johnny Murata, played by Brandon Lee. I’m not sure what’s more amusing, the rather comical bug eyed look this prompts from Mr. Lee, or the suit he’s wearing. I’ve never seen a guy in a maroon and white ensemble before. Well, not outside of the ‘70s, anyway.
8. The fight continues. Well, it’s a fight in the clinical sense. Kenner is barely breaking a sweat, and the bad guys are just taking the ass-kicking of a lifetime here. Murata enters and tells Kenner to stop. This being an absurdly macho action film, Kenner starts to fight with Murata. So Brandon Lee shows he was every bit as cool as his old man by doing a back flip that ends with him kicking Kenner in the face. Before things can go any further, the bad guys shoot at both men from outside and drive off.
9. Kenner and Murata identify themselves as cops to each other, and it turns out Murata has been assigned as Kenner’s new partner. After some back and forth about the fight, they arrest the one guy who didn’t get away.
10. Back at the station, Kenner and Murata bring the guy in, and Murata is greeted by a bunch of cops who wish him good luck. Kenner explains that these are his ex-partners. But hey, given that they’re still alive, I’d say Murata shouldn’t have too much to worry about. It’s not like he’s Dirty Harry and all his partners eventually end up either in the hospital or dead.
11. In an interrogation room, Murata is getting nowhere fast with the guy, so Kenner takes over. After getting no response, he rips the man’s shirt open to reveal an incredibly elaborate tattoo which covers his entire torso. Kenner staggers back. There’s a quick flashback of him as a child walking in on his parents being murdered.
12. After still not being able to get anything out of the guy, our intrepid duo goes to the observation room for a little exposition. The tattoo signifies the man’s allegiance to the Iron Claw, a Yakuza gang. There’s a little back and forth between the two men, which ends with Kenner telling Murata to ask the man who his boss is. During all this, the man is taking off his shirt in the background. Kenner and Murata notice this, but not before the man manages to... break his own neck. Well, I guess that’s one way to avoid having to explain to the boss why you got caught.
13. Next, we’re introduced to our main villain for the evening, Yoshida (played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, last seen on this site as Master Roshi in Elektra). He’s at his home base, which looks to be some sort of industrial area. Well, this is a B-level action movie from the early ‘90s. You have to expect at least one industrial area. It’s a law.
An uncanny resemblance to the actor?
Um, no. Not really.
14. A man is pleading for his life, and we see that it’s Tanaka from the beginning. He’s tied up in the front seat of a car, which is about to be smashed in a compactor. Tanaka says Yoshida can have his club and “the girl” but of course ends up getting squashed in the compactor. Hilariously enough, the shot goes from Tanaka in the car to a dummy in the car while the man is still talking. And yes, the dummy is seen quite clearly in a close up shot. You know, I think even Roger Corman would tell the crew, “Okay, we need to do another take. That looked awful!” At the very least, he would have the sense to not have dialogue going on while the dummy was in shot.
15. There’s also another angle where the car is empty, and not even the dummy is in there. Yes, this movie actually did score a theatrical release.
16. Later that night, Yoshida is throwing a party. It’s the standard villain party with drugs, naked women, and music. You get the point. It’s here that we are introduced to our female lead, Minako (Tia Carrere) and her friend Angel, a blonde girl who happens to have a bit of a crack addiction. Angel has found out about Tanaka getting killed, and if you guessed that she won’t be long for this world, you have very good instincts. Sure enough, she’s called into Yoshida’s office, where he’s watching video camera footage of her talking to Tanaka on the phone.
17. Yoshida asks Angel what he should do with her, and in a really sleazy moment, she offers to “do him” in front of his men. Yep, it’s a B-movie all right. Welcome to Sleaze Central! A goon fills a crack pipe and hands it to Angel, while Yoshida turns on a video camera and undresses her, partially with a knife. And then he slices her head off with a samurai sword. Given how sleazy this scene is, I find it funny that the cut to the next scene comes just as her head is flying off. Apparently, there was a longer shot of the decapitation, but it was cut in order to get an R rating.
