Product: Showdown in Little Tokyo [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 2.0
So bad that it's almost good
Showdown in Little Tokyo is one of those generic action movies from the early 90's that is so bad that's kind of enjoyable to watch as trashy entertainment. What makes it even more enjoyable is the fact that it stars a young Brandon Lee as a wise-cracking cop who teams up with a tough guy cop (Dolph Lundgren) to take on a Yakuza drug boss (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Showdown in Little Tokyo features atrocious (and occasionally funny) dialogue, tons of cliche story elements (the bad guy also killed Lundgren's parents when he was a child), sloppy editing, and a training montage to boot! Tia Carrere has a thankless role as a damsel that gets wooed by Dolph, and the action and fight scenes are a mix of sloppily put together (the concluding fight during the parade) to well choreographed (most of Lee's sequences). All in all, Showdown in Little Tokyo should be unbelievably bad, but it has a sense of charm about it's comic book-style mayhem, and seeing Brandon Lee work his magic (there just isn't enough of him here) is reason enough to see this flick.