Showdown in Little Tokyo is a Mark L. Lester film released in 1991. It features Brandon Lee in his first American film role, starring alongside Dolph Lundgren. Set in Los Angeles, California, two police officers attempt to take down a new and deadly Japanese drug gang. It is an action movie with sequences of martial arts.

Los Angeles cop Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) is an American who was raised in Japan. He is given a new partner, Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee), a Japanese man who was raised in America.

The two were made for each other — Kenner doesn't appreciate American culture, while Johnny doesn't much like Japanese culture. One thing they both enjoy are the martial arts, of which they are both experts.

The two are assigned to L. A.'s Little Tokyo, where they break up some criminal activity in a Japanese restaurant, and an arrest is made.

While Kenner and Johnny are questioning the suspect, Kenner loses his temper and rips the suspect's shirt, and the tattoos that Kenner sees on the suspect remind Kenner of when he was 9-years-old, a time when he witnessed his parents getting killed by a member of the Yakuza (organized crime in Japan).

The tattoos are the trademark of the Yakuza's Iron Claw clan. However, before Kenner or Murata can get any information out of the suspect, he kills himself in the interrogation room by breaking his own neck.

When Kenner and Johnny go to a Japanese nightclub to look for information, they are ambushed and taken to see the nightclub's owner -- and Kenner recognizes the owner as Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the man who killed his parents.

Yoshida is now the leader of the Iron Claw clan, and he's also a drug manufacturer using a local brewery as his distribution center. Yoshida has brought the people of Little Tokyo to their knees, and the people of Little Tokyo would like to be rid of him.

Kenner and Johnny escape from the night club. When Yoshida rapes and kidnaps lounge singer Minako Okeya (Tia Carrere) and vows to kill Kenner, Kenner and Johnny set out for Yoshida's heavily guarded home, where they rescue Minako.

His pride wounded, Yoshida sends his men out to get Minako back. He has Kenner and Johnny captured and tortured, but Kenner and Johnny manage to escape, and they take on Yoshida and his men in a battle to the death.