JoeB131
when you think about it, this movie is really trying to recapture the formula for Casablanca, and failing in its own way. The plot is simple. Bogey plays a pilot who returns to Japan to recover his business and his long lost wife, only to discover she has married another man. He also discovers the daughter he never knew. A Japanese nobleman uses information on his wife to blackmail Bogey into doing his bidding, setting up a smuggling operation that will bring war criminals back into the country to upset the occupying forces. Of course, you are substituting Post-war Japan for Nazi-occupied North Africa, but in the end, this film has the same elements. Humphrey Bogart playing his signature anti-hero. You have the love triangle between Bogey, the starlet whom he left years ago, and the man she has committed herself to now. And you have the the bigger political machinations going on around them. I also think it is interesting how politics worked into this movie,filmed in 1949. During WWII, the Japanese were portrayed as inhuman monsters, but after the war, there was this effort to portray average Japanese as decent, led down the evil path by leaders who took advantage of them. The Americans are only here to help. (Imagine if our current bunch of Hollywood types tried to make that kind of movie about our occupation of Iraq!) My other quibble with this movie is just how dumb Bogey's character has to be to make the plot work. YOu know, like you figure out his ex is married to someone else long before he does. Or, "Gee, you have a seven year old daughter, and I left you seven and a half years ago. Imagine that!" Sorry, I'm used to Bogey being smarter than this!
Michael O'Keefe
This is a Humphrey Bogart movie you don't often hear about. I found it to be interesting and believe it or not I think better than some of his earlier movies. Joe Barrett(Bogart)has turned in his Army clothes and returns to post WWII Tokyo to check on a bar that he co-owns; and to check on his wife Trina(Florence Marly), who has since divorced him and married an important man in Tokyo, Mark Landis(Alexander Knox). Joe ends up getting involved into smuggling exiled criminals back into Japan. Well photographed. A touching relationship between Bogart and the young Lora Lee Michel, who plays Trina's daughter. Other players include: Sessue Hayakawa, Jerome Courtland, Teru Shimada and Hideo Mori.
edwagreen
This certainly was not one of Humphrey Bogart's best films? Why? There is very little action in it. When the action does occur, it is so quickly resolved. The end is predictable because after all, Florence Marly (Trina) can't have two husbands.What did the Baron really want to smuggle in? Just some Communists to stir things up, or was there even more to this?Alexander Knox is terribly miscast as Bob Landis, Tina's second husband. He is drab and needed to exert much more if he wanted his wife back all together. Surprising that after such a brilliant performance in 1944's "Wilson," Knox got stuck with this part. The part called for a much more suave type. Knox totally lacked appeal here and it's showing.The ending really ends with a question mark. However, we know how it had to end. This certainly wasn't a Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman could easily have taught Flo Marly some lessons here.
bkoganbing
Picture Bogart's Richard Blaine character renamed Joe Barrett for this film. Instead of Casablanca, he's got a place in Tokyo just like Rick's named Tokyo Joe's. World War II interrupts things and he gets out of Japan and goes in the Army Air Corps where he spends a good deal of time bombing a lot of Japanese real estate. Including Tokyo which because of the wooden buildings pre World War II was particularly vulnerable to Curtis LeMay's incendiaries. It's a miracle, but his place survived intact and he'd like to resettle in Tokyo and pick up where he left off.Bogey gets an even better piece of news. His Ingrid Bergman who he married before the war and thought dead is alive. He goes to her and finds out she divorced him for reasons the plot really doesn't go into and is now married to a high civilian official with the American occupying authority, read MacArthur. That would be Alexander Knox in the Paul Henreid part and Ingrid, in this case Florence Marly has a daughter now.Still Bogey who would now like to make money as a civilian flier as well is being used at cross purposes by the American Army Intelligence and by some Japanese led by Sessue Hayakawa who haven't adjusted to losing the war.Tokyo Joe follows in plot lines laid out by Casablanca, but it sure treads softly in those giant footsteps. It was nice to see Sessue Hayakawa appear for the first time in an American film since silent days. He became a star in the early silent era in Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat and left for Japan with the coming of sound where he stayed a popular film star right through World War II.Hayakawa came here for Tokyo Joe. Other than establishing newsreel shots, this whole production was done on Columbia's back lot. Humphrey Bogart gives it the old Casablanca try, but he must have been wondering why he left Warner Brothers he was certainly doing a lot of the same stuff over at his home studio.
AD
