In its ethnically clueless casting, Showdown in Little Tokyo was ahead of its time (anticipating today’s Indian David Copperfields and African-American 11th century Scottish noblemen); in everything else, it is hopelessly stuck in the time of which it was a product (at one point, someone claims that “Russia’s no longer a superpower;” to be fair, though, in this day and age Russia is apparently only potentially a superpower).
The former is not necessarily a good thing (and it’s worth noting that, offensive though it might be, Showdown in Little Tokyo wasn’t following a misguided politically-correct agenda when it cast its stars), nor is the latter necessarily bad — especially if you have a hankering for an early 90s buddy cop action flick with T&A aplenty (unfortunately not including Tia Carrere, though her body double, whoever she was, is still pretty fucking hot; she truly is the unsung MVP of this movie).
The crux of the film is the odd coupling of two LA cops; one is supposed to be Japanese-American, and the other is supposed to be American-American.
Somewhat ironically, the latter knows a whole lot more about Japanese culture and history than the former, but that’s not the odd part; what’s really odd is that the All-American cop is played by Swedish Dolph Lundgren, while the part-Japanese cop is played by part-Chinese Brandon Lee.
As for Carrere, who is of Filipino and Chinese descent, she plays a character called Minako Okeya. Basically, what director Mark L. Lester was telling us was something along the lines of, ‘they all look the same to me, anyway.’
Sergeant Chris Kenner (Lundgren) and Detective Johnny Murata (Lee) meet while Kenner is ‘defending’ Mama Yamaguchi’s restaurant from a bunch of Yakuza extortionists.
I write defending in quotes because, predictably, the good guys (each of whom happens to be, both despite and because of their respective backgrounds, martial arts experts. If the filmmakers really wanted to subvert expectations, they should have Murata the rare Asian action movie character who isn’t a fucking ninja; then again, that would have defeated the purpose of casting Lee in the first place) cause so much material damage that Mama Yamaguchi would have been better off paying up (no innocent bystanders are harmed because the restaurant patrons magically vanish between shots, although we can see the back of the last of them as he casually exits through the front door, eliciting nothing but a side glance from one of the non-speaking Yakuza).
Mama Yamaguchi is understandably distraught, but we won’t be seeing her again, so I guess she must have collected the insurance money and gotten the hell out of Little Tokyo.
By the way, Little Tokyo is indeed a very small place; the leader of the Yakuza turns out to be Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the same crime boss who killed Kenner’s parents when Kenner was a child in Japan.
This turn of events leads Murata to exclaim, “I’m partnered with a homicidal maniac on a vendetta of family vengeance” (never mind that ‘vendetta’ already pretty much means ‘family vengeance’). Murata nonetheless goes along with it because, he tells Kenner, “despite myself, I like you. I don’t want to see you dead.”
The question is, does Murata just ‘like’ Kenner, or does he ‘like-like’ him? A case can be made for the “implicit homoeroticism” of late 80s-early 90s action films, but I don’t think that’s the case here; when Murata tells Kenner (and he says this fully aware that, under attack by superior numbers as they are, these may well be his very last words ever) that “you have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen on a man,” it’s safe to say that the homoeroticism is uncomfortably explicit. And then there’s the part where the two shirtless heroes are electro-tortured side by side, lending a whole S&M dimension to the proceedings.
Sure enough, Kenner and Minako hook up, but they’re still stuck with third wheel Murata, who is also openly attracted to her (perhaps he swings both ways?), adding sexual disorientation to the ethnic confusion.
Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m giving all of this much more thought than the filmmakers themselves did; certainly, a movie that alludes to Alphaville’s “Big in Japan,” and in which the villain ends up impaled on an oversized Catherine wheel (the firework, not the method of public execution, although here it sort of counts as both) after he and the hero have dueled with swords they have stolen from performers in a parade (who for some reason were carrying actual, sharp-as-fuck katanas), can’t be said to take itself too seriously.
But then, it’s also the same movie wherein the hero’s romantic interest almost commits seppuku as a result of having been kidnapped and raped by the bad guy. I can only hope that wasn’t done just for shits and giggles.
90% of Everything is Crap 