Another Brandon Lee R-Rated Masterpiece That’s As Memorable As The Crow, But It’s Buried.

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Another Brandon Lee R-Rated Masterpiece That’s As Memorable As The Crow, But It’s Buried.

Written by Robert Scucci | Published 5 seconds ago

It’s time to admit it. I just gave up now Exhibition in Little Tokyo it’s a perfect watch because i’m lazy, and it’s not streaming on any of the forums i’m subscribed to. I host a bad movie podcast with one of my best friends from middle school, and we spend our time talking bad movies. My partner is completely rude A crowwhile I’ve written about the 1994 masterpiece on this site many times because it’s the best revenge movie ever made. In an attempt to provoke me, he suggested we watch 1991 Exhibition in Little Tokyowhich, despite its 33 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, is just another Brandon Lee masterpiece that I now need to make sure everyone watches because it’s so good.

Until this past weekend, A crow it was my only reference point for Brandon Lee, and now I’m worried because he might have lived Crow’s production, he was going to be one hell of an action star that was going to smoke the competition. This movie has everything you want to see in a buddy cop comedy, and it’s all thanks to Brandon Lee’s charisma, and his chemistry with Dolph Lundgren.

Buddy Cop Will Go Buddy Cop

Exhibition in Little Tokyo the last joke is unusual when you are introduced to its protagonists. First, we have Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren), an American who was raised in Japan and hates American culture. His new partner, Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee), is a Japanese-American who doesn’t care much about culture. Both are martial arts experts, and both have been tasked with taking down members of the Iron Claw yakuza family operating out of Los Angeles.

This is where it gets personal. Chris recognizes his own leader, Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), as the man who killed his parents when he was a child. To complicate matters, Yoshida is a ruthless crime lord who plans to distribute methamphetamines from a brewery he uses as a front. Ready to kick asses and take names, Chris and Johnny throw hands, empty magazines, and fight their way through Yoshida’s fans.

Along the way, Chris crosses paths with a lounge singer named Minako (Tia Carrere), who is caught between her work and the criminal world around her, and this adds another layer of complications to the scene. Not only do we have a revenge arc, we have a damsel in distress ordered to “shoot anything she sees that moves” seconds after being taught how to handle a gun.

A Boilerplate Layout Suggested by Its Amazing Lead

If you’re a fan of the Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, and Rush Hour franchises, you’ll get that. Exhibition in Little Tokyo it follows all the same beats, and its story is at a good level. Two boys who shouldn’t be against each other are forced to work together to take down one bad guy. Nothing new to see here. But within this framework, you find some simple chemistry that you can see between two leads in this genre. Dolph Lundgren had already established himself as a movie star, but this was Brandon Lee’s first American film role in the United States. You’re confident from the moment you’re introduced to the fact that you’ve been working at this level for years.

The one-liners between Lundgren and Lee are corny by design, and you can tell they both understand it’s up to them to run the show. I’m not trying to throw shade at writers Stephen Glantz and Calliope Brattlestreet, or director Mark L. Lester, but the real story Exhibition in Little Tokyo it’s about as unremarkable as you get. It works because you can hear its cues wink at the audience, even if they don’t actually do it. There are plenty of jokes about how well-endowed they are under the belt, and every exchange is filled with laughter.

When lines like “You have a right to die,” and “There are more bad guys than bullets” are thrown by Brandon Lee, right before Dolph Lundgren arms himself to the teeth with swords and daggers, it’s clear that you shouldn’t take movies like this too seriously. You have to sit back, let the stars chew up the space, and watch them start to explode.

Exhibition in Little Tokyo delivers this in spades, and it’s a shame it’s currently hidden behind a paywall. Since I dropped four dollars on this one for research purposes, I don’t regret renting it. If you’re a fan of Brandon Lee, Dolph Lundgren, or buddy cop comics in general, just know that this one has earned its keep as a cult classic and is well worth buying. And of course you can complain that we would have had more Brandon Lee action movies if his other masterpiece hadn’t taken his life.