The background about the making of the movie is as interesting if not more so than the actual finished product. Along with Hayakawa's return to American films, this Columbia Pictures drama was the first movie to film in a post WWII and still war-torn Tokyo. Well, sort of filmed. For the most part, any scene with actual members of the cast was filmed in the Columbia backlot in Hollywood, but a film crew was sent to Tokyo to get second unit footage to help set the scene. In other words, we get covered up stunt doubles made to dress up like the cast which is then awkwardly transitioned to actual footage of the cast. Still, the actual Tokyo footage is pretty crazy to watch, an eerie look at a city still recovering from World War II.
As Japan recovers from WWII with U.S. occupation forces helping the process along, a former Colonel, Joe Barrett (Humphrey Bogart), arrives in Tokyo looking to start up his business that he was forced to abandon at the outbreak of the war some four years earlier. Before the war, he ran a successful, very popular bar in the city, but now finds himself working against the current as no one is able to get him through miles of red tape. Joe finds out his wife, Trina (Florence Marly), who he believed was killed in the war is very much alive, and is now married to an American bureaucrat, Mark Landis (Alexander Knox). Some shady Japanese underground and black market dealers (including Hayakawa) have some dirt on Trina, and only Joe can keep it under wraps, going to work for the dealers transporting illegal goods into the country via a surplus plane. Joe knows he's in over his head, but he has no other alternative, even if a confrontation is coming his way.
A pissed off Bogie in post World War II Tokyo with a score to settle was all I really needed to hear when this movie popped up on TCM's schedule recently. The 1940s were Bogart's decade, and his performance is the best thing going for this story, but other than that it doesn't have much going for it. My picture of director Stuart Heisler making this movie is a man spinning countless plates and seeing which ones stay up the longest. Anything left standing makes the final cut, and there are a lot of plates. As the story figures out where to go -- and the movie's only 88 minutes long to begin with -- as everything is introduced, the pacing suffers. The first 45 minutes border on straight boredom. The last 45 minutes or so do salvage things as best as possible, but the movie on the whole is a mixed bag.
Released in 1949 and the first movie to film in Tokyo since the end of the war, there is still a feeling of American propaganda here. Certain scenes seem written up by a government official to convince an American audience how noble our actions are in helping the country recover after defeating the Japanese in a brutal war that they had started. On the other hand, the script actually tries to portray the Japanese people as just that, people. We're talking two radically different cultures here, and the Japanese culture does not have the compassion in victory that the U.S. had. So when American forces occupied the country and tried to improve the situation, some Japanese were obviously confused and embarrassed. Thankfully, there isn't much in the way of pandering though, and it felt like a genuine effort to educate and teach as opposed to manipulate and trick an audience.
No one does the tortured, tragic tough guy lead quite like Humphrey Bogart. In a performance that isn't remembered among his best -- more so a judgment of the movie, not his acting -- he does what he does best. Bogie is tough as nails, but in a departure from so many of his other roles, we get to see a softer side of him. This is especially true when he finds out he has a seven-year old daughter, Anya (Lora Lee Michel). He has no idea how to be a father or even interact with the little girl, but he wants to and he at least makes an effort. Torn up inside over how he had to abandon Trina during the war, Jim is trying to right a wrong however he can. A more understated performance from Bogart than you might be used to, but a good one still.
As mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the second half of the movie leaps and bounds ahead of the first half. The drama and action kicks in with the story pointing in the right direction, knowing where it wants to go. Working with U.S. Intelligence, Joe realizes he's stumbled onto a plan to see a Japanese resistance group of angry WWII vets rise up all over Japan. Throw in his daughter being kidnapped as a bargaining chip, and you've got one pissed off Dad working against a clock. While the ending is cut and dry as to exactly what happens, I think it was pretty clear what happens. It is an appropriate ending for a movie from the 1940s, one that is pretty easy to see coming if you think things through.
Other than Bogart, Hayakawa is the only instantly recognizable face here (for me at least). He's a pretty cliched, stereotypical Asian villain, but that's what he did best in the second half of his career. He's one bad dude, and because it is 1949, he's going to get hit with a wall of karma in a big way. Knox is the cold American official while Marly looks almost skeletal as Bogie's squeeze, Trina. Their chemistry is lacking something too which is unfair because of how easy Bogie made it look with Ingrid Bergman or Lauren Bacall. Teru Shimada has a good supporting part too as Ito, Joe's business partner in running the bar, a middle-aged Japanese man trying to come to terms with everything that's happened during and since the end of the war. It's a decent movie limited by its flaws, but it is still Humphrey Bogart, and that's hard to beat.
Tokyo Joe <---TCM clips (1949): ** 1/2 /****
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