What the Hell did I just Watch? : Showdown in LIttle Tokyo

I should’ve packed it in when Dolph Lundgren (Seargent Chris Kenner) after running out of bullets to miss people with, “Liu Kanged” over a whole ass Oldsmobile.

Nothing good could come from continuing on this venture. This movie had either peaked, or hit rock bottom, (I’m still unsure of which) and any further exploration was sure to unearth some long forgotten horror…But continue I did. “Little Shop of Horrors” ahem, excuse me, “Showdown in LIttle Tokyo” was a part of the 2nd wave of the Martial arts craze that included Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Seagal, and the beginning of Brandon Lee’s career (that thankfully got better from here) it starred Dolph Lundgren when it should’ve starred Lee, and based on my love for all things martial arts, and Lee’s namesake alone I bought this movie on tape when I was a teen.

I should go back in time and whoop my ass.

Nostalgia is a helluva drug, and having not seen this movie since my teens, I was excited to press play on the DVR once I recorded it. I was um….See what I would say is…..What’s really interesting here is…Sometimes…You know?…Look, the movie is a steroid induced fever-dream where Dolph Lundgren is a one man yakuza task force with complete autonomy to do just about anything he wants because? His partner Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee) is ..well..um…see what I would say is…What’s really interesting here is…Sometimes…You know?…Look, he’s now Japanese instead of Chinese (Lee’s actual heritage) so that he can learn about his own culture from Sensei Sergeant Chris Kenner (Lundgren). It’s a buddy cop film , but its on speed so they initially don’t like each other for about t-minus five seconds until orientalist cliche’s bond them together in a relationship built on condescension, repressed homoeroticism, misogyny, paternalism and jokes from the inside of a laffy taffy wrapper.

A quote from the movie "Showdown in Little Tokyo". Brandon Lee changes his opinion about raw fish

If this movie was about black gangs instead of the Yakuza mob I have no doubt this scene would consist of N****’s eating fried chicken around a stripper pole. Thats’ how they understood culture in movies like this. Then there’s the Dolph Lundgren’s Rising Sun jacket that he wears every where because it was obviously half of the movie’s budget, and because the movie never wants you to forget Chris Kenner is in fact Japan. Like he is the country of Japan all by himself. If you want to visit Japan just go hang out with Chris, you’re there. Besides culture master Kenner, there is Seppuku, and Yubitsume (the cutting off of fingers as atonement), and beheadings, (always used prominently as a way of othering other cultures as savage) as well as Kenner’s custom built house of dojoness (an expensive undertaking whose affordability on a cops salary is never explained like most things involving everything in this epic white male fantasy movie). Lee for all of his martial art skill and inherent charm is drained of almost any of it here. The grossly sexist script, sees to it his charm is turned into douchery , and the scripts racist, and condescending white supremacy made it so I’m not sure one couldn’t prove it’s entirely plausible that Lee’s “Murata” is in actuality a figment of Kenner’s imagination, meant to massage his own ego by telling him things like “You have the biggest d**k I’ve ever seen on a man”. Yes that really happens…

From the cult classic "Showdown In Little Tokyo." Brilliantly odd.

We have no idea what Lee does when Lundgren’s Kenner is not around, though judging by the way he talks that might be for the best. No idea what he truly stands for, or of what his identity is outside of being a cop or an accomplished martial-artist. As proof of the writers former jobs as unheralded Hade’s minions Oblivious, and Obscene, they have the line in the script where Murata explains that his Japanese mother made him take martial arts so that he could identify with some aspect of his culture…

When Showdown wasn’t happily travailing in orientalism, and misogyny, it was just being flat out right ridiculous. This film would have worked significantly better as a comedy satire of the excess of american exceptionalism in film. Instead it takes serious scenes where people break their own necks, and where Dolph Lundgren picks up whole cars to use as shields, and backs himself out of a window with the same effort he’d put into walking into a room with an open door…

Showdown in Little Tokyo - A Fully Loaded Savior: Sgt. Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) fights his way into crime lord Yoshida's home to stop Minako Okeya (Tia Carrere) from commiting suicide. BUY THE MOVIE: https://www.fandangonow.com/details/movie/showdown-in-little-tokyo-1991/1MVe02ce3af44069603e6aca68e585764ea?cmp=Movieclips_YT_Description Watch the best Showdown in Little Tokyo scenes & clips: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZbXA4lyCtqobR57g5MPDe9Fns7HCtXbD FILM DESCRIPTION: An American with a Japanese upbringing, Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) is a police officer assigned to the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles.

I guess even glass was like “My guy that’s Dolph Lundgren, do yourself a favor and BREAK!!”

Showdown in Little Tokyo serves as a wonderful/exacerbating ( I still can’t decide because again..Nostalgia is a helluva drug) tasteless reminder of the fact that no film is apolitical. They are always at the behest of some master(s) and are subject to the master(s) worldview. Even for action movies of the time, this movie is out of pocket, and pumped up on its own drugs of choice, making one narratively irrational choice after another, forgetting plot points, and practically yelling racial epitaphs while claiming it’s actually in love with Japanese culture, but that’s not to say it was alone in this. It’s one of many great examples of just how in love over time whiteness has been with itself, and how long movies served as propaganda in lieu of proof of white superiority. You want to know why people were so incensed at a white man teaching a black man how to eat fried chicken in that “The Coloring book” movie, (a stereotype whites themselves created, because just about everyone loves fried chicken) watch Showdown have its white lead explain the most basic “back of a cereal box” aspects of Japanese culture to a cartoonishly ignorant Johnny Murata, and then at the end of it all have Galactus Drago climb all the way into full on Japanese garb to kick Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s ass, cheered on by new girlfriend Tia Carere playing “new girlfriend Tia Carrere”. Okay she has a name but it might as well have been “new girlfriend Tia Carrere”. After getting baby oil all over the very talented, and very much so wasted Tagawa in the midst of their Mortal Kombat (baby oil was the other half of this budget , everyone else was clearly working for coupons from the local Safeway) Lundgren turns to the camera where it is revealed we are now in He-man the movie, and it all makes sense. End credits read…”Now who’s the master?!” ….or at least they might as well have.