Tokyo Joe (1949)

Strong and Moving!

Excellent, a Must See

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

"Tokyo Joe" from 1949 was the first film that was allowed to film in post-war Japan. Produced by Bogart's Santana Productions, it's just fair.Bogart plays Joe Barrett, who returns to Japan after the war to start a business. While there, he discovers that his wife Trina (Florence Marly) is still alive. However, when he finds her, he discovers that she has divorced him and remarried a man named Mark Landis (Alexander Knox). Joe is determined to get her back and needs to extend his visa; he is approached by Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa) who wants him to front an airline freight company for him. He would be importing frozen frogs. However, there is some additional freight, and for that, Kimura blackmails Joe by telling him what Trina was involved in during the war, which he will make public if Joe doesn't work with him.This film bears a passing resemblance to Casablanca, and Bogart is clearly going through a transition which would lead to some of his greatest films and performances in the '50s. Rick of Casablanca is clearly pretty tired out. Being a small company, Santana Productions did not make big films or hire actors equal to Bogart, so the effect here is mediocre.Florence Marly as Trina is a disaster - cold, very haughty looking, without much acting ability. It's impossible to see why Joe fell for her in the first place. She is no Ilse Lund, and she has no chemistry with Bogart. Her intentions are very unclear as well - as an actress, it doesn't look like she made any decisions about the character. Alexander Knox and Sessue Hayakawa are very good. Bogart, for my money, is always terrific.Definitely worth seeing for the Japanese location and for Bogart. It's not horrendous, but considering that Bogart starred in so many classic films, it's not that good.

Although this movie is not one of Humphrey Bogart's more noted projects, it is a good movie. At first the plot seems absurd but as the story unfolds it becomes more comprehensible. It is hard to imagine that there was a time when the United States actually occupied Japan and directly supervised the Japanese people. It was another era, when the United States was in every sense of the term the dominant power. Once again Humphrey Bogart believes that he has been jilted by a woman and once again finds out that there is more to the story, and in this movie, this scenario works well. Alexander Knox is great as the other main male character but it is Sessue Hayakawa who once again delivers a strong performance as a shady, underworld figure in post-war Japan. This movie is worth watching.

This could have been a great movie. Post World War II location movies have an intriguing atmosphere. Post-war Japan offered a terrific setting, but the obvious backlot location, with cheesy process shots trying to pass for a Japanese location, ruins the effect.Alexander Knox is great, sardonic but principled, and Sessue Hayakawa is deliciously malign. Florence Marly is a poor substitute for Lisbeth Scott -- or couldn't Bogey get his own wife Lauren Bacall to work for scale? Bogey himself looks a little shopworn. Even the love child is fat-faced and unappealing.Compromise pervades the film, from the cardboard sets to the hack director. Because it was cheap, exterior shots were minimal, and so the action scenes, which could have made for a more exciting story, give way to lots of talky interior stuff.As the studio system weakened, star-owned production companies, like Bogart's, Burt Lancaster's and Alan Ladd's, were in vogue. Stars can't resist the chance to star in a movie where they don't have to take direction, so they often hire weak directors, usually with dismal results. This is one of them.

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!