Showdown in Little Tokyo

Infobox Film
name = Showdown in Little Tokyo


caption = DVD cover of Showdown in Little Tokyo
director = Mark L. Lester
producer =
eproducer =
aproducer =
writer = Stephen Glantz
Calipoe Brattlestreet
starring = Dolph Lundgren
Brandon Lee
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
Tia Carrere
music = David Michael Frank
cinematography = Mark Irwin
editing =
distributor =
released = August 23, 1991
runtime = 79 min.
country = United States
language = English
Japanese
budget = Unknown
followed_by =
imdb_id = 0102915

"Showdown in Little Tokyo" is a Mark L. Lester film released in 1991. It features Brandon Lee in his first American film role, starring alongside Dolph Lundgren. Set in Los Angeles, California, two police officers attempt to take down a new and deadly Japanese drug gang. It is an action movie with sequences of martial arts.

Plot

Los Angeles cop Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) is an American who was raised in Japan. He is given a new partner, Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee), a Japanese man who was raised in America.

The two were made for each other — Kenner doesn't appreciate American culture, while Johnny doesn't much like Japanese culture. One thing they both enjoy are the martial arts, of which they are both experts.

The two are assigned to L. A.'s Little Tokyo, where they break up some criminal activity in a Japanese restaurant, and an arrest is made.

While Kenner and Johnny are questioning the suspect, Kenner loses his temper and rips the suspect's shirt, and the tattoos that Kenner sees on the suspect remind Kenner of when he was 9-years-old, a time when he witnessed his parents getting killed by a member of the Yakuza (organized crime in Japan). The tattoos are the trademark of the Yakuza's Iron Claw clan. However, before Kenner or Murata can get any information out of the suspect, he kills himself in the interrogation room by breaking his own neck.

On the other side of town, the leader of the Yakuza Iron Claw clan, Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), kills the owner of a popular downtown nightclub called the Bansai Club by crushing the owner, Tanaka (Philip Tan), in a car compactor.

To celebrate "gaining" ownership of the Bansai Club, Yoshida throws a party at his house with all of the club staff.

One of the girls at the party, named Angel (Renee Griffin) is revealed to have warned Tanaka about Yoshida behind his back, and this infuriates Yoshida. Yoshida questions Angel about her loyalty, and she attempts to appease Yoshida by offering her body to him. Yoshida then drugs Angel and strips off her clothes, and then fondles her from behind before beheading her.

When the coroner runs an analysis on Angel's body, it is revealed that she had a large amount of methamphetamines in her system (induced by Yoshida) which would've lead to her death anyway. This discovery of drugs, together with the suspect having Yakuza tattoos, cause Kenner and Johnny to go to the Bansai Club in search of information. There they meet lounge singer Minako Okeya (Tia Carrere), who was a good friend of Angel's. Before they can get any useful information out of her, they are ambushed and taken to see the nightclub's owner -- and Kenner recognizes the owner Yoshida as the man who killed his parents. Yoshida is now a drug manufacturer using a local brewery as his distribution center.

Kenner and Johnny escape from the nightclub. Later that night, Yoshida rapes and kidnaps Minako and vows to kill Kenner.

Kenner and Johnny set out for Yoshida's heavily guarded home, where they rescue Minako.

His pride wounded, Yoshida sends his men out to get Minako back. He has Kenner and Johnny captured and tortured, but Kenner and Johnny manage to escape, and they take on Yoshida and his men in a battle to the death.

Cast

*Dolph Lundgren ... Sgt. Chris Kenner
*Brandon Lee ... Johnny Murata
*Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ... Funekei Yoshida
*Tia Carrere ... Minako Okeya
*Toshirô Obata ... Sato (also as Toshishiro Obata)
*Philip Tan ... Tanaka
*Rodney Kageyama ... Eddie
*Ernie Lively ... Detective Nelson
*James Taenaka ... Hardboy
*Renee Griffin ... Angel
*Reid Asato ... Muto
*Takayo Fischer ... Mama Yamaguchi
*Simon Rhee ... Ito
*Vernee Watson-Johnson ... Nonnie Russell - Coroner
*Lenny Imamura ... Kickboxer #1
*Roger Yuan ... Kickboxer #2

Goofs

• When Dolph supposedly jumps over the car in the opening shoot-out, you can very clearly see the springboard used to propel him into the air.
• The Yakuza who kills himself in the interrogation room can be seen later in the film when Yoshida is "interrogating" Angel.
• When Angel walks up to Yoshida to take his shirt off, they're both a few feet away from the table. When Yoshida turns Angel around, they're both on the table's edge, despite not moving from their original spot.
• When one of the Yakuza members was about to be crushed by the hydraulic press, in one shot, you can clearly see he was replaced by a dummy.

• When Dolph breaks the neck of one of the Yakuza henchmen, his arms drop lifelessly, and then his right arm reaches back up after he's suppossed to be dead.

Trivia

• When complimented on his house, Dolph responds by saying "I built it."
• Tia Carrere's nude scenes were performed by body double Tera Tabrizi.

*About 13 seconds were cut from the US version in order to receive an R rating. Scenes include: A shot of a topless woman at a party, several shots of Yoshida caressing Angela, an extra angle of her getting her head chopped off, as well as one when we see her headless corpse, and a shot of Kenner twisting a knife around in a guy's stomach underwater.

External links

*imdb title|id=0102915|title=Showdown in Little Tokyo