Stopover Tokyo (1957)

Why so much hype?

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

You know, I'd say that about the only thing that could've possibly saved this piffling, little, 1957,"soap-opera-of-an-espionage-movie" from sinking under that sheer weight of its stars' inflated egos would've been the crucial appearance of everyone's favorite 50-meter monster, Godzilla.Yeah. If Godzilla had suddenly shown up on the scene (and, once more, crushed Tokyo, but good, with his big, clumsy feet) that would've been a deliciously perfect way to generate some desperately needed interest for the likes of this utterly dry, drab and thoroughly sappy melodrama.I would've loved to have seen actors like pretty-boy Robert Wagner, and cute-kittenish Joan Collins, and bored-bloated Edmond O'Brien running for their very lives down the streets of Tokyo while being hotly pursued by good, old Godzilla.Believe me, Stopover Tokyo really was that bloody boring. And only an appearance by Godzilla could've saved it.

Based on of all things a Mr. Moto story, Stopover Tokyo has US Intelligence Agent Robert Wagner foiling a plot to assassinate the American High Commissioner at a ceremony devoted to eternal peace. Along the way Wagner gets a chance to romance Joan Collins working as a ticket agent for British Airlines. Definitely mixing business with pleasure.Another agent Ken Scott has staked his claim on Collins before Wagner got there and that does cause some friction between them. Nevertheless Wagner and Scott do get the job done.Leading the opposition is Edmond O'Brien who has the guise of an American businessman, but is secretly a Communist spy. The 'High Commissioner is Larry Keating and his wife is Sarah Selby who is more concerned for her husband's safety than he is.We did not have a High Commissioner in Japan at that time, we had an Ambassador as our occupation was formally over. We did have a High Commissioner for the Ryukyu Islands chief among them being Okinawa which was our's by UN Mandate. They were not returned to Japan until the Seventies.Stopover Tokyo's biggest asset is the location cinematography done in Japan, particularly in Kyoto the ancestral home of the Emperors. Kyoto was untouched by American bombing and is one of the few places that retains a traditional Japanese look from before World War II. As the city is sacred in Shinto religion the Japanese located no war industries in or near it and we obliged by not bombing same.For all of that Stopover Tokyo is a routine action/adventure Cold War story. It might have helped if 20th Century Fox had gotten Peter Lorre to do Mr. Moto in the film.

"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.

What the previous commenter says about the movie is basically true--this is simply an escapist picture-postcard movie with a bad, clumsy script. The action, what there is of it, makes no particular sense and the romance is dull and pointless. Some lines of dialogue, like the one about "no paragraph about Welshmen" (used twice!) are actually stupid. However, the commenter also went over the top himself when discussing the movie's condescension. Robert Wagner doesn't say "Ah, Madame Butterfly" to a waitress. She's not a waitress, she's a famous Japanese diva that he met on the flight to Japan, and it's explained in the first scene that she's known for playing Butterfly. So there's nothing condescending or inappropriate about it, but this detail is so clumsily placed (like everything else) that I can't blame the viewer for misunderstanding it.