Welcome to The Weekend Watch, a weekly column focusing on a movie—new, old or somewhere in between, but out either in theaters or on a streaming service near you—worth catching on a cozy Friday night or a lazy Sunday morning. Comments welcome!
What better way to celebrate the release of the remake of The Crow, the film whose production included the fatal on-set accident that ended star Brandon Lee’s life so shockingly early, than by getting away from all things Crow-like, mascara-clad and grimdark? Rather, The Weekend Watch is another Lee movie, but one so far in the other direction from Alex Proyas’ goth super-revenger that it’s almost like it’s on the other side of the world. Showdown in Little Tokyo, Lee’s first American film, was mostly forgotten upon its release in 1991, but after Lee’s untimely death in 1993, it was reclaimed on video as a schlocky look at the burgeoning star’s lost potential.
Trafficking in the martial arts stereotypes that Lee might’ve faced for longer as the son of Bruce Lee—but also running counter to those same typecasting expectations—Showdown in Little Tokyo is as charming in execution as it is off-puttingly silly in design. As our Jim Vorel wrote in his entry for the film in our Best B-movies list, the cop partnership between Dolph Lundgren’s Japanese-speaking tough guy and Lee’s Peter Parker-like snot-nosed fast-talker is “a team-up for the ages in this hyper-macho, hyper-ridiculous early 1990s action fest.” The expectation-swapped characters see Lundgren as a white samurai cop (something covered a bit more literally in Amir Shervan’s truly hilarious Samurai Cop) and Lee as a wise-cracking fish out of water. Together, they kick the hell outta crime—and, briefly, each other—in a deeply sleazy drug ring thriller.
Directed by Mark L. Lester, a journeyman who had a mid-’80s boom with Firestarter and Commando, the film has a decent ear for its own absurd lines. That keeps Showdown in Little Tokyo on the right side of the law in meathead actioner world, a place where Tango and Cash are employees of the month, every month. When the beleaguered police captain berates Lundgren and Lee for wasting time “whacking on each other” instead of catching crooks, it’s genuinely funny. When Lee’s character observes, unprovoked, that his partner has the biggest dick he’s ever seen “on a man,” it’s so left-field that you can’t help but chuckle. Screenwriting couple Stephen Glantz and Caliope Brattlestreet had their pulpy, stupid ideas realized to the fullest, whether that means all hell breaking loose during a crashed underground boxing match or a dude getting squashed in a junkyard car crusher.
But that’s nowhere even close to scratching the slimy film off the surface of this underworld romp. Our hapless duo witnesses nyotaimori (eating sushi off a naked woman), topless female sumo wrestling, an asscheek-waving bathhouse brawl and a very horny decapitation. This is all in service of stopping a very evil yakuza boss (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) from breaking into the American drug trade…and from murdering more scantily-clad women.
Tagawa’s scarred, sneering kingpin is a sadist, but he’s also an economic threat: he gathers the more stereotypical L.A. gangbangers for what amounts to a pulpy boardroom meeting, telling them about his very hostile takeover. And of course the Japanese—whom Hollywood, along with so much of America, was in the middle of panicking about in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s—were going to win out. Their organization is unmatched, and their products were simply better. As one cop puts it, the “ice” the yakuza is pushing makes “rock” look like decaf! The U.S. had anxiety about its cars, its electronics…even its stimulants getting outpaced by Japanese imports.
It’s one of the only real themes visible in Showdown in Little Tokyo, which is otherwise an excuse for Lee to mug at the camera and offer a little glimpse at his acrobatic athleticism. He’s charming and handsome, and he moves well, but he’s even better as a foil to Lundgren. I earnestly love Lundgren’s turn as a beefy otaku, rolling his eyes as Lee hams it up. He plows through the mayhem, amusingly resigned and towering over his opponents, and shouts Japanese at hooligans. He’s stoic and put-together and a neckbeard’s fantasy: a Japanophile super-cop. He films the laziest sex scene. He flips a car! It’s an incredible performance.
Lester was already on his way back down at this point after his box office peak, following the schlock money along the distribution models of the time, from drive-in exploitation to B-blockbusters to straight-to-video to SYFY original movies. (His 2005 TV film Pterodactyl, which stars Coolio, came out before they started using “Shark” as a prefix.) Lester fully embraced the DTV nature of his films, filling their rote structures with stereotypes, violence, profanity and nudity. Lee and Lundgren fit right in, never deviating from what the roles needed from them. Lundgren got the chance to play with those expectations, both earlier and later in his career. Lee only began breaking away before his career was cut short, but as The Crow solidifies itself as a long-running franchise, Showdown in Little Tokyo takes its rightful place as Lee’s cult classic.
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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