"Stopover Tokyo" is a loose adaptation of John P. Marquand's famous novel, "Right You Are, Mr. Moto," the final entry in the Mr. Moto literary series. In the novel, two American intelligence agents, Jack Rhyce and Ruth Bogart, land in Tokyo on a secret CIA mission. Mr. Moto greets them at the airport and, together, the trio unmasks a dangerous international spy ring. Sadly, Marquand's briskly-paced novel has little in common with this lackluster film.
In true Hollywood fashion, the plot of the novel was largely discarded in its transition to the big screen. In the film, the intrepid American hero is renamed Mark Fannon and he is glibly portrayed by Robert Wagner with a wavy '50s pompadour. Fannon is a flippant code clerk in American counterintelligence who is sent to Tokyo on a routine courier mission. He soon uncovers an assassination plot hatched by crazed American communist George Underwood (Edmond O'Brien). Fannon races against time to stop the assassination, but the suspense quickly fizzles as the film's ending is boringly anti-climactic.
The ending of the original novel is far more poignant. In the novel, Communist agents kidnap the romance interest, Ruth Bogart, and throw her out of a high window. She plummets to her death, and the guilt-ridden hero resigns from the CIA. Yet, in this film, the skilled female operative of the novel has been downgraded to Welsh airport clerk Tina Llewellyn (Joan Collins). Collins imbues her character with a superficial triteness that oddly complements the film's dull script.
Overall, "Stopover Tokyo" is ploddingly slow and is similar to John Wayne's "Big Jim McLain" (1952) with the macho American agent thwarting evil Communists in the Pacific. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese characters are condescendingly stereotyped as child-like individuals who easily understand American slang, yet speak in Pidgin English. If you enjoy these types of movies, I suggest the vastly superior "Blood on the Sun" (1945) with James Cagney and Sylvia Sydney battling the Imperial secret police in prewar Japan.
In true Hollywood fashion, the plot of the novel was largely discarded in its transition to the big screen. In the film, the intrepid American hero is renamed Mark Fannon and he is glibly portrayed by Robert Wagner with a wavy '50s pompadour. Fannon is a flippant code clerk in American counterintelligence who is sent to Tokyo on a routine courier mission. He soon uncovers an assassination plot hatched by crazed American communist George Underwood (Edmond O'Brien). Fannon races against time to stop the assassination, but the suspense quickly fizzles as the film's ending is boringly anti-climactic.
The ending of the original novel is far more poignant. In the novel, Communist agents kidnap the romance interest, Ruth Bogart, and throw her out of a high window. She plummets to her death, and the guilt-ridden hero resigns from the CIA. Yet, in this film, the skilled female operative of the novel has been downgraded to Welsh airport clerk Tina Llewellyn (Joan Collins). Collins imbues her character with a superficial triteness that oddly complements the film's dull script.
Overall, "Stopover Tokyo" is ploddingly slow and is similar to John Wayne's "Big Jim McLain" (1952) with the macho American agent thwarting evil Communists in the Pacific. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese characters are condescendingly stereotyped as child-like individuals who easily understand American slang, yet speak in Pidgin English. If you enjoy these types of movies, I suggest the vastly superior "Blood on the Sun" (1945) with James Cagney and Sylvia Sydney battling the Imperial secret police in prewar Japan.