Showdown in Little Tokyo
Showdown in Little Tokyo
A raised-in-japan supercop kicks into high gear when the mobsters who killed his parents make a play for power. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/03/2004 Starring: Dolph Lundgren Brandon Lee Run time: 78 minutes Rating: R Director: Mark L. LesterShowdown 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
List Price: $ 9.98
Price: $ 11.98
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Guilty Pleasure is Written all over this,
There is a Reason Dolph Lundgren has been around and it’s not because of his incredible acting skills. The reason is that he is one of the icons of cheesy action films. So when you get an action comedy such as this it makes for a fun little trip for an hour and a half.
The story here is that Dolph Lundgren is police officer on the trail of the iron claw, a group of yakuza run by a man who murdered his parents when he was a child. He teams up with a wise cracking Brandon Lee and together along with a sexy Tia Carrea they take down the Sinister Drug Lord.
What makes the movie funny is that Dolph Lundgrens character is an america who is totally into the Japanese way of the Samurai while Brandon Lee grew up an American Mall Rat and is a fish out of water at some of the places that they go to search for these criminals.
Overall this is a simple early 90′s action film that appeals to those who like to spend an afternoon hooting and hollering at bad guys getting their @$$ handed to them as well as the usual gratiouse nudity and one liner moments. Leathel Weapon this is not but for a good low price, you can’t go wrong.
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|“I just want you to know you have the biggest……..”,
Ah, the adventures of the type-casted actor (Jason Statham, reading this?). In 1991 some mediocre filmmakers contacted Lungren for a movie and they told him that he would be playing Drago (from ‘Rocky IV’) once again. For legal purposes they told Lungren that the English diminutive for Drago is Kenner.
Kenner: he’s a cop, he wears a black leather jacket, he’s impervious to bullets, he lifts cars, he single-handedly mangles and destroys people and public property, he is emotionless and expressionless, and he works alone. Like a pirate…cop, the expressionless Kenner swings on a rope onto the ring of an illegal fight club, pummels both fighters, and puts everyone in mortal danger, or as he likes to say, “under arrest.” Perhaps Kenner is angry because the Asian mob bosses never invite him to be a contestant in their fight club – and because of this, Kenner drives his muscle car around town looking to take out his mildly racist frustrations on members of the Asian community to the tune of “left over Miami Vice music” (Tom Servo). Later in the movie, Kenner throws some human bodies around like rag dolls and in the process he destroys a Chinese restaurant, where he then meets his assigned partner played by Brandon Lee. I felt bad for Brandon Lee just for having had to read the script for this movie, especially those revolving around Kenner’s crotch (this in itself deserves some additional analysis, but I’ll leave that to someone else). Brandon Lee and Kenner don’t like each other at first but upon listening to Kenner’s tragic story about the murder of his parents, Lee joins Kener in a mindless game of revenge because he really “likes him” and in the end they’ll be able to “eat fish off of the naked chicks”. Well guess what? I like Dolph too, er I mean Kenner. And while the director’s intent was to convince the viewers that Kenner needs a midwife to assist him in giving birth to human emotions, the real moral of this story is: we all need someone to help us kill bad Japanese druglords to avenge the deaths of our loved ones.
This movie is so god AWFUL that I LOVE IT!
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|OUTSTANDINGLY,
Tia Carrere NEKID, a pretty stoner decapitated by a samurai sword, nude women buried in sushi? Sure sounds like a porno film, don’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s got nudity, kung fu, and Brandon Lee and that’s more than what you’d ask out of this film. The Martial Arts scenes are excellent, ranging from a brawl in a bathhouse, to a duel in a street fair. There’s also twice as much comedy here as you’d expect, most of it delivered by Brandon (“In between cooking cycles, your’e supposed to baste us.”). Dolph Lundgren is also fun to watch, and he sometimes rather inadvertendly contributes to the comedy (“Take this, point it in the direction things are, pull the trigger and they’ll fall down.”) For nudity, kung fu, and a very good film with Brandon Lee, SHOWDOWN is exceptional. Oh, speaking of Brandon, here’s another of his humorous lines (“Kenner, just in case we get killed, I wanted to tell you, you have the biggest
—- Iv’e ever seen.”)
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