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Poster for Showdown in Little Tokyo
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Released
1991 · FILM

Showdown in Little Tokyo

American cop Chris Kenner teams up with reluctant partner Johnny Murata to take down a ruthless Yakuza drug lord threatening Little Tokyo, forcing them to confront their cultural divides and deadly martial arts battles before the neighborhood is destroyed.

“One's a warrior. One's a wise guy. They're two L.A. cops going after a gang of drug lords. Feet first.”

Directed by
Mark L Lester
Written by
Stephen Glantz, Caliope Brattlestreet
Runtime
79 min
ActionComedyCrime

Synopsis

Chris Kenner is an American police officer raised in Japan, assigned to patrol the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles. He works alongside his partner, Johnny Murata, a Japanese-American who has distanced himself from his cultural heritage. Though they differ in background, both Kenner and Murata are skilled in martial arts, which they employ in their confrontation with Yoshida, a violent yakuza drug dealer connected to Kenner's past.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 22

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Michael EliotShot by Mark IrwinScored by David Michael FrankDesigned by Craig Stearns

Box Office

1991 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.3× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$2.3M

Budget$8.0M
Worldwide gross$2.3M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $455K — 20% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $650K — 29% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 140 theaters

Also known as

  • Little Tokyo. Ataque frontales
  • Dans les griffes du Dragon rougefr
  • Resa dei conti a Little Tokyoit

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