TOKYO VICE (2022 HBO Michael Mann Japan '90s crime journalist true story drama)

[Inspector Norse]

Caught the first episode of this 2022 HBO Michael Mann Japan '90s crime journalist true story drama last night, written by acclaimed playwright JT Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort as a callow but determined young American who gets a job as a reporter on Tokyo's top paper and starts digging into the Yakuza while also clashing with the rigid hierarchical structure of the paper and everything else.

Very slick and stylish, great location and camera work - Mann hallmarks, I guess. Not yet sure about Elgort in the lead but the supporting cast - Ken Watanabe is the biggest name there but hasn't really appeared yet - impressed and the fish-out-of-water thing was done with more subtlety and sympathy for the Japanese POV than, say, Lost in Translation, while still capturing the weird blend of familiarity and exotica I assume (as someone who's never been there) you get in Tokyo.

Thought this first episode was promising, in a meet-the-characters way; the second episode is also available now (as is the third according to Wiki, though it wasn't on the Nordic HBO Max channel) and thereafter it'll be a once-weekly affair, though I think it was only the first one that Mann directed.

Anyone else manage to catch or planning to catch this 2022 HBO Michael Mann Japan '90s crime journalist true story drama?

[Mister Six]

As someone currently in love with the Yakuza games, I'm really looking forward to this, although not looking forward to having my perception of the Yakuza as a bunch of superpowered goofballs who espouse the value of friendship and honour shattered by the grim reality.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Beware, there's a huge gap between the pilot episode directed by Mann and the next two, which are much more generic in execution.

Episodes 4 and 5 drop tomorrow morning, 6 and 7 next week, and the finale in two weeks.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I'm finishing episode 6. This has really turned into a run of the mill crime show with the main particularity that it's shot on location and partly in Japanese. Playing a Yakuza game is so much more fulfilling.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Season completed.

It was supposed to be a slow burn, then the finale sets up major developments.

They just happen to rely on complete contrivances, where most of the main characters suddenly act like complete idiots as they make rushed decisions, because the plot asks so. In the process, it creates cliffhangers for a possible season two that look completely artificial, and totally out of touch with the content of the original book, that was supposed to be a memoir.

The cast is fine. The American actors' commitment to speak Japanese fluently is impressive. Ken Watanabe is his usual great, Ayumi Tanida (Tozawa) makes for an impressive villain, with some good chilling cruelty. But the writing got worse and worse, with plots coming out of nowhere or getting suddenly merged together for no good reason, with a last minute attempt to raise the stakes that doesn't pay off at all.

Spoiler alert

Detective Katagiri was described as cautious, never the one to jump on a good lead when it could compromise the whole investigation, as shown with the meth traffic at the airport. So, it makes zero sense that he would bet it all on a tip by dirty cop Miyamoto, whom he's just turned as a double agent, for an operation supposed to take place on the same night. Why the rush? Won't there be more deliveries? Why would he accept to show up alone for a major drug bust? Even if he trusts Miyamoto, didn't he experience some last minute change of plan by Tozawa, whom he knows to be a very shrewd crime boss? And how come Tozawa managed to set up the whole charade during his conversation with Miyamoto on the same morning?

Samantha is even worse when she gets tricked by Polina's boyfriend (something that could be spotted from miles away) and fails to involve anybody else for delivering the money. Besides, the con artists appear to be amateurs, who have also failed to take into consideration she was dating an actual yakuza, some guy who could, you know, actually have some kind of violent revenge on them.

Except that the script had decided that Sato would end up being stabbed by some trainee who had barely made an impression until now (if he had actually been featured in previous episodes, I honestly can't remember), but suddenly botches things repeatedly, and manages to make a terrible (and justified) impression on Ishida himself. As a kindness act by Sato, the trainee gets fired, and of course his first move is to kill Sato.

Weirdly, the only character who doesn't act in the finale as if pushed by some deadline is Jake, the only character (the colleagues and boss from the newspaper barely register during the episode) who has to comply by some actual deadline for his work. So we get Jake on meth (he's inhaled much more intended) which makes for some welcome comic relief, then karate Jake (we had seen him practicing a couple of times, but he's shown here as impressive, resisting two opponents for quite a long time), and ultimately Jake-as-the-only-honest-man-in-Tokyo-with-Katagiri, on the verge of making an alliance with him, which makes even less sense. Of course, we needed some callback to the opening scene with Katagiri from the pilot (the flash forward scene that's supposed to take place two years later), but it's just bad dramatization that feels artificial.

[close]

[rjd2]

Half way through this and might bail or force myself to finish reluctantly.

The pilot is wonderful, but its begun to meander and everything involving Samantha and the characters who enter her world just don't interest me at all. Not a surprise she barely featured in the stellar pilot.

[kitsofan34]

I'm a big Mann Fann, does the pilot work as a standalone thing?

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Not really, as the opening sequence from the pilot is a flash forward to some event one year and a half, two years after the plot of the first season. But, as Ken Watanabe doesn't appear otherwise before the second episode, it was a trick to feature his character in the episode. And the opening sequence, which is tense and slick, is the best thing in the pilot.