Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991)

Showdown in Little Tokyo is a 1991 American buddy cop action film directed by Mark L. Lester, who also produced with Martin E. Caan. The film stars Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee; it was the latter’s first American film role. The film was released in the United States on August 23, 1991. Showdown in Little Tokyo was Dolph Lundgren’s last Warner Bros Pictures film until 2018’s Creed II.

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), an American of partial Japanese descent. Kenner does not appreciate American culture, while Johnny does not like Japanese culture much. One thing they both enjoy are the martial arts, in 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.

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While Kenner and Johnny are questioning the suspect, Kenner notices that he has tattoos of the Iron Claw Yakuza clan. This reminds him of when he was 9 years old and he witnessed his parents being killed by a member of the Yakuza. Before Kenner or Murata can interrogate the suspect further, he kills himself in the interrogation room by breaking his own neck. The leader of the Iron Claw clan, Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa),

kills the owner of a popular downtown nightclub called the Bonsai Club by crushing the owner, Tanaka (Philip Tan), in a car compactor. To celebrate gaining ownership of the Bonsai 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 who then questions Angel about her loyalty.

Box office:

Warner Bros. was not happy with the film and re-edited it, only to give it a limited theatrical run in the United States, Mexico, Australia, France (where it skipped Paris), Italy, Israel and Hungary. Except for these markets, the film was released direct-to-video in 1992. In the US opening weekend, the film grossed $455,192 from 140 theaters which was an average of $3,251 per theater. This accounted for 20% of the film’s total gross. It ranked #9 in Hungary’s Top 10 of 1992 Overall Box Office Grosses (according to the 1994 Variety International Film Guide), grossing $197,590 in Hungary. After Brandon Lee’s untimely death while filming The Crow (1994), movies with Lee in leading roles, such as Showdown in Little Tokyo, saw a surge in video sales.