Only now does it occur to me... SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (1991)

Only now does it occur to me... that SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO––a film by action master Mark L. Lester, director of COMMANDO and CLASS OF 1984––functions as a true culmination of his favorite thematic obsessions: brilliant/groan-inducing action one-liners, explosions, and male musculature.

From my understanding, this film was butchered by the studio during the edit, but I think the general sensibility of Lester's vision still shines through. For instance, the man who brought us the lingering closeup of Arnold's jiggling pecs during a machine gun battle in COMMANDO begins SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO with what feels like a formalist experiment: male musculature––covered in full-body irezumi (yakuza tattoos) is drenched in, alternatively, light and shadow.

It's the early 1990s action equivalent of Hollis Frampton's experimental 1969 short LEMON, whereupon a static shot of a lemon is subjected to different lighting techniques, revealing something 'profound' about the nature of darkness. Anyway, Lester and Frampton both pare the narrative to the bare essentials: in this case, pectoral muscles, and the different and dramatic ways in which one can view them.

Also, this movie––and those pecs, by extension––were shot by David Cronenberg's resident cinematographer Mark Irwin (SCANNERS, VIDEODROME, THE FLY, etc.). How 'bout that!

What is this movie about? You may be wondering. I've already told you. But if you insist on labels, it's about two tuff cops: Dolph Lundgren

 

 and Brandon Lee.

It's set in Los Angeles' (apparently) yakuza-ravaged Little Tokyo, and its premise is firmly rooted in 1991. You see, Dolph's Aryan-looking buddy cop is fluent in Japanese and was raised in Japan. Whereas Brandon's Asian American buddy cop was raised in the Valley and apparently has never even heard of Japan. This creates what we call dramatic tension. 

 

Acting-wise, as "the straight man," Dolph is basically doing That Thing that Dolph does, and Brandon, as the "funny one," is kind of doing a less cartoonish Bruce Campbell shtick. My wife and I are pretty sure that Brandon Lee took some acting classes before appearing in THE CROW.

Tia Carrere (WAYNE'S WORLD) is in here, too, as a singing gangster's moll who eventually is swept up in a (chemistry-challenged) romantic subplot with Dolph. The tracks she sings sound very "Olivia Newton John."

The villain is yakuza boss Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (MORTAL KOMBAT, THE PHANTOM, VAMPIRES, LICENSE TO KILL) who, as usual, treats us to some solid scenery chewing throughout.

The music, by David Michael Frank (THE MASK, OUT FOR JUSTICE), is, like the pecs, majestically pared down to the basics. There are essentially two tracks here, a "danger" track––used for all the action/peril scenes––and an "ambient" track, for everything else. The ambient track sounds a lot like the rootin-tootin electro-nonsense in THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS: THE MOVIE. All of this is intended as a compliment. 

The one-liners are amazing. COMMANDO brought us "Don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired" and "Remember Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied." SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO gives us "You have the right to remain... dead!," "It's kinda like one of those video games... you just defeated the first wave," and "We're gonna nail this guy, and when we get done, we're gonna go eat fish off those naked chicks!" The latter refers to a yakuza restaurant featuring the klassy combination of nude women and sushi, and is immediately followed up by this manly hand clasp, straight out of PREDATOR.

Speaking of gender politics, SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO objectifies the male and female form with relative and trashy equivalency.

Of course, we have to give the advantage to the male form, so celebrated in this film that I'm pretty sure both Dolph and Cary-Hiroyuki spend more time in various states of undress than they do clothed.

 

The highlight (lowlight?) may be when Brandon Lee's character tells Dolph, apropos of nothing, "Kenner, just in case we get killed, I wanted to tell you, you have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man." That being said, I am certain there is nothing in this film that can match the poetry of the final battle in COMMANDO.

In the end, I would categorize this as second-tier Lester and a damn fun time. Also, I'm pretty sure Tarantino is a fan, since A. It stars Dolph Lundgren, and one of Tarantino's first jobs was working as a P.A. on the Dolph Lundgren workout video, MAXIMUM POTENTIAL; B. it stars Brandon Lee, and Tarantino is a Bruce Lee obsessive (and a "children-of-Hollywood-stars" obsessive); and C., Dolph's character's backstory is very similar to O-ren Ishii's in KILL BILL (as a child, his parents were murdered in front of him by yakuza, in their bedroom).

Finally, I must point out that one Little Tokyo filming location––a crime scene exterior––is shot outside the church from John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS! (Which is now the Union Center of the Arts.)

(Also note, far left: Vernee Watson, a.k.a., "Viola 'Aunt Vy' Smith" from THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR.)

Only now does it occur to me... HAIL, CAESAR! (2016)

Only now does it occur to me... that the Coen Brothers must be closet HIGHLANDER fans. Why else would they cast Clancy "The Kurgan" Brown:

and Christopher "Connor 'The Highlander' MacLeod" Lambert:

in the same film? (aside from the fact that they're both great, and wield a mean broadsword).  With Sean Connery retired, I suppose my only complaint is that Michael Ironside didn't make the cut.

Regardless, this film does not in fact revolve around HIGHLANDER sequel/prequel fan-fictions, though from the standpoint of a character-actor fan, it has much to offer. Amid the pastiche of Busby Berkeley and Vincente Minnelli-style musical numbers, there are wonderful bits by Robert Picardo as a finicky, test audience rabbi:

Fisher Stevens (who really knows how to make an entrance) as a furtive, blacklisted screenwriter:

Tilda Swinton in dual roles as twin-sister gossip columnists:

and Dolph Lundgren as the silhouette of a Russian submarine captain:

(since it's the 1950s,  I can't tell if he's Ivan Drago's father, or the father of his henchman from A VIEW TO A KILL). 

Sure, it's no BARTON FINK, but I enjoyed it.

Only now does it occur to me... JURASSIC WORLD

Only now does it occur to me... that the JURASSIC PARK series has steadily and perhaps deliberately evolved into the ROCKY series.  Allow me to explain (spoilers will follow for all the JURASSIC PARK films and the first four ROCKYs).

JURASSIC PARK and ROCKY are both classy, well-constructed films with serious tones; they were followed up with sequels that tried to capture the spirit of the original on a larger scale, but with mixed results.  JURASSIC PARK III and ROCKY III both stride solidly into camp territory

I.e., Michael Jeter as a mercenary....


and Hulk Hogan as "Thunderlips."

and introduce absurd, larger-than-life villains (the exaggerated Spinosaurus and Mr. T, respectively).  JURASSIC PARK III especially mirrors ROCKY III when the T. Rex (sort of the Burgess Meredith of the JURASSIC PARK universe––unrepentantly irascible, and a great motivator) is killed by the Spinosaurus in order to "raise the stakes."

Thus, the stage was primed for JURASSIC WORLD to embrace its destiny as the ROCKY IV of dinosaur movies, and hoo boy it sure did, unabashedly leaping headlong into the wondrous realm of the "clumsily endearing trashterpiece."  In JURASSIC WORLD, our new villain is "Indominus Rex," who, like Dolph Lundgren in ROCKY IV, is a 'roided-out, unnatural laboratory creation.


 "I must break you."


"If he dies, he dies..."  Yet both easily tamed by Grace Jones.

Like ROCKY IV, it purports to ironically demonstrate the shortcomings of "bigger is better" commercialism by unironically embracing "bigger is better" commercialism.

Whether in Las Vegas...

...or at Sea World?

There's a zany "celebrity cameo... as themselves" (James Brown in ROCKY IV and Jimmy Fallon in JURASSIC WORLD), and JURASSIC WORLD ends with a dino punch-out session more ludicrous than anything ROCKY or the WWF ever dreamed up, with dinosaurs literally tagging each other into the ring (they really should have played rockin' entrance music for each of the contenders... "And now, tagging in with folding chairs, the Mosasaurus and The Ultimate Warrior!"), delivering head-nods, inspirational beatdowns, and the like.





The whole thing was more than worthy of a faux-Gorbachev slow-clap.

I have no doubt that in whatever form JURASSIC PARK V emerges, it will do so as the ROCKY V of JURASSIC PARK movies.  (What dinosaur will boldly step up to the plate and be the "Tommy Gunn" or JURASSIC PARK?)

Anyway, I'll leave you with this inspirational juxtaposition:

And after all that clobberin' you may have the overwhelming desire to purchase cuddly variants of the main characters. 

Film Review: A VIEW TO A KILL (1985, John Glen)

Stars:  5 of 5.
Running Time: 131 minutes.
Tag-line: "Has James Bond finally met his match?  Find out this summer."
Notable Cast or Crew:  Grace Jones (VAMP, CONAN THE DESTROYER), Christopher Walken (THE DEER HUNTER, MOUSEHUNT), Roger Moore (THE QUEST), Tanya Roberts THE BEASTMASTER, SHEENA), David Yip (Wu Han from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM), Alison Doody (Elsa from INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE), Desmond Llewelyn ('Q' from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE through THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH), Lois Maxwell ('Moneypenny' from DR. NO through A VIEW TO A KILL), Patrick Macnee (THE AVENGERS, WAXWORK), Patrick Bauchau (PHENOMENA, THE RAPTURE), and Dolph Lundgren (ROCKY IV, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE).  Cinematography by Alan Hume (RETURN OF THE JEDI, A FISH CALLED WANDA). Music by John Barry and Duran Duran. 
Best One-liner:  "Wow!  What a view."  –"TO A KILL!"

I'm going to begin with a quote by Roger Moore:

"I was horrified on the last Bond I did. Whole slews of sequences where Christopher Walken was machine-gunning hundreds of people. I said, 'That wasn't Bond, those weren't Bond films.' It stopped being what they were all about. You didn't dwell on the blood and the brains spewing all over the place."

What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Walken?  Have you besmirched the legacy of Bond by rewriting the punctuation in your lines and machine-gunning hundreds of innocents?

Walken weighs in:

"In the Bond movie I had my hair dyed an impossible yellow color, and that became my motivation in a lot of scenes: I had a secret subtext, which I never discussed with anybody. Every time I had a scene with somebody I’d be thinking: What do you think of my hair? Do you like my hair? Do you like what they did to me? That they made me look like this? So next time you see the movie, every time I torture somebody I’m really thinking, You see what they did to me with this hair?"

It would seem from those quotes that A VIEW TO A KILL took Bond in a new direction, truly a Bond for the 80s; a Bond that came out the same year as COMMANDO and ROCKY IV and DEATH WISH 3; a Bond for a Cold War edging its way toward a natural conclusion (whether that means a "hot" war or Glasnost); a Bond for the Reagan-consumerist era; a Bond for the Computer Age; a Bond for the hair salon; a Bond that's not afraid to live dangerously; a Bond that's not afraid to–
DANCE!

 

INTO THE FIIIIYAHH

THAT FATAL KISS 

ISSS ALL WE NEED

DANCE INTO THE FIIIIYAHH

TO FATAL SOUNDS OF BROKEN DREAMS

DANCE!

INTO THE FIIIIYAHH 

 

 

And just like that, James Bond's silhouette shoots a leftover laser from MOONRAKER at a black-light day-glo body-painted skiing-gal who happens to be on fire, and said laser transforms her into an ice sculpture.  All of this is accompanied by the best of all the James Bond themes, Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill."  This is the only Bond film that could ever be confused with Lorenzo Lamas' BODY ROCK, and that's the highest praise I can give anything.

Here are five reasons why A VIEW TO A KILL joins MOONRAKER and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER in the holy trifecta of Bond movies that perfect the art of big-budget absurdity:

#1.  The Grace.  As villain/quasi-Bond girl and Chris Walken-squeeze "May Day," Grace Jones takes what could have been a throwaway role and makes it subversive, beautiful, insane, and transcendent.

Here she is, dressed in 'Cardinal Chic' with a New Wave miter, I guess?

Shes a badass, she's a singer, she's a fashionista, she's the scariest vampire of the 1980s, and according to her own drunken rant, she's the "Queen Bitch Jungle Mother of New York."  And no one will ever dispute that.  Hell, if I was Mayor, I'd make it official.  I'd build her a statue on Liberty Island.

Pictured:  an artist's rendering of said statue.

It's a pity that she hasn't starred in more movies (though we still have this, VAMP, CONAN THE DESTROYER, and STRAIGHT TO HELL, among others).  However, I must point out, having seen her live in glorious concert in Fall of 2012, that she looks exactly the same at age 64 as she did in the 1980s.  At the risk of offering too much information, yes, this means she can rock out a thong (which she did) and receive a senior discount at the same time.  So, Hollywood: it is your duty to cast her in every action movie from now on (or at least THE EXPENDABLES 4?).

At any rate, she's on, to quote Duran Duran, "FIIIIYAHH": 

WATCH!  Grace Jones force-eject some poor sap from a zeppelin with extreme prejudice!

AIEEEEE!

SEE!  Grace Jones evolve hairstyles and make more costume changes than at one of her concerts (once per song, by my reckoning).

GAZE UPON! Grace Jones clawing and fighting her way through an assortment of action scenarios, relentless as a Terminator, and then some!

BEHOLD!  Grace Jones base-jumping off the Eiffel Tower as some perturbed guy tries to chase her:

Who is that guy, anyway?  I've already forgotten.  Isn't this film part of a larger series?

#2.  The Dolph.  Grace Jones' then-bodyguard/boyfriend Dolph Lundgren happened to be on set when the role of a "KGB henchman" needed to be filled, and the rest is film history.

Here is a picture of Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren, in case you've forgotten what they look like:

Again, just imagine this, 900 feet tall and where the Statue of Liberty used to be.  It'd be like the Colossus of Rhodes meets the ISLAND LIFE album cover.

(By now, you've probably figured out that Grace Jones will slink her way into as many entries on this list as possible.)  So the scene is this:  the KGB comes after Christopher Walken for reasons that don't really matter, and he sics Grace Jones on their caviar-eatin', vodka-swiggin' asses:

 She promptly free-lifts (did I mention that she has super-strength?) one of the KGB,

prompting a young agent who doesn't get any lines (Dolph) to briefly leap into action, drawing his gun.

This isn't quite a Mexican standoff.  I'm actually not sure what to call this. 

Walken gives her the ole' pursed-lip head-nod

and Grace flings the guy to his well-deserved humiliation.  Dolph blankly checks on him and gives Grace a look of respect and abject fear.  It is difficult to determine whether or not he is "acting" in this moment.

Even Ivan Drago cowers in the presence of Grace Jones.

#3.  The Walken.  It's already been said, but I can't emphasize enough that Walken's acting motivation is whether or not the other characters in the scene like his hair.  

 

 Walken gets needy when his hair is ignored.

That alone could be enough to make him the most ludicrous Bond villain, but then you stick him in a scene with Grace Jones, and it's like mixin' bleach and ammonia– they're edgy, they're volatile, and if you have inadequate ventilation, they could induce a fainting spell.

Take this scene for instance, where Grace and Walken are practicing aerobo-judo-jazzercise or whatever

and Grace is revealing that she has the best crazyfaces since Jean-Claude and Bolo hit the mat.  After a takedown, the pin quickly takes on a sexual connotation and the two bark and growl and bite at one another

for what seems

an inordinate amount

of time.  

The fact that this was allowed in a Bond movie is simply wonderful.  It's like performance art, like they were having a joke on mainstream movie audiences; an outré, private joke.  

I wish that there was a freeze frame that could perfectly encapsulate this sentiment.  Wait, there is!

Eat yer hearts out, Bond fans!

#4.  The Robot.  There's a subplot where 'Q' (Desmond Llewelyn) is fucking around with a comical robot creation who is the median point between SICO in ROCKY IV and Johnny Number Five in SHORT CIRCUIT. 

The film ends with Q fondly using the robot to spy on Bond's sex life,

a voyeuristic episode that ends prematurely with a well-flung towel.

The fact that Q is a massive creeper is casually brushed aside because the robot is pretty fucking adorable.  I approve of all of this.

#5.  The Music Video.  Technically this isn't part of the canon, but I couldn't resist checking out Duran Duran's tie-in music video for "A View to a Kill."  The premise is that the members of Duran Duran are wandering around the Eiffel Tower, doing "spy" things, like Simon Le Bon operating a secret remote control hidden inside a walkman

 and Nick Rhodes taking high-fashion photographs.

It bears mentioning that all of this is basically a backdrop for some amazing blue-screen cut-out images of flying videocassette cameras that zoom to and fro like 2-D drones, with no sense of depth or perspective:

It's jaw-droppingly terrible, and by terrible, I mean "great."  I have no idea how one would even come up with such a concept, much less actually try to visualize it.

It ends with the brilliant one liner, "Bon.  Simon Le Bon."  

Then an explosion is set off on the tower and all of Duran Duran are apparently caught up in the blast.  We cut to a wide shot of an Eiffel postcard exploding, and not the actual Eiffel Tower.  

 

I suspect this was done so not as to offend some French tourism bureau, but it thus implies that the entirety of the music video took place on the surface of a postcard of the Eiffel Tower (thus vindicating the terrible 2D camcorder graphics?), which is the kind of logic that simply doesn't exist outside of a classic music video.

 

And hell, what's once more for good measure:

Five stars.

–Sean Gill