Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Spikeopath Whilst scanning thru the list of upcoming movies available to UK free to air users, I saw the name Bogart attached to Tokyo Joe and naturally had my interest piqued. The guy or gal who writes the two line sell for the movies showing said "little known Bogart movie set in post war Japan, where he is forced to resort to extortion and smuggling to save his woman and child". Sounds ace eh? Well there's a good reason that Tokyo Joe is a little known Bogart movie, it's because it simply isn't very good. It's a film that Bogart manages to get thru with his reputation still in tact, but really it's only because of him the film is worth sitting thru.Directed by Stuart Heisler {The Glass Key}, Tokyo Joe is adapted from a story written by Steve Fisher and sees Florence Marly, Alexander Knox and Sessue Hayakawa co-star along side the irrepressible Bogie. Filmed in that semi-documentary way that was popular around the time, it's a ponderously downbeat picture that hasn't got the script to make it a dialogue driven cracker. There's some interest in its look at post war Tokyo, with some of the actual location work in Tokyo {exteriors} helping fuel that docu-realism angle they were going for. But even that plus point is dragged down by the uneasy sit it has with the artificial studio lot work and the stuffy screenplay provided by Hume & Millhauser. Florence Marly has a lovely structured face, but she's a very poor actress if this is anything to go by, whilst Knox appears to be star struck alongside Bogart. Thankfully Hayakawa is up to the challenge, while the print of the film is of excellent quality.It's a shame about its many faults because its story is a good one, smuggling, kidnapping and army political post war machinations should make for a fine movie. In fact on release the general public warmed to its pertinence of the setting and time. The critics were less enamoured and once one strips away the novelty value, all that is left is Bogart admirably carrying the load to the inevitable gloomy, all be it briefly exciting, finale. 4/10

Irie212 Two charismatic actors (Bogart and Hayakawa), two exceptional performances (Teru Shimada and Alexander Knox), and two powerful scenes redeem this otherwise disappointing film.First, the disappointments: director Heisler and leading lady Marly. Both clearly earned their downward-spiraling careers, each ending up cranking out small-screen stuff like "77 Sunset Strip." Equally disappointing is the on-location filming-- not that it's bad. It memorably exposes the destruction of Tokyo (half the city was bombed to rubble by us); unfortunately, the vintage footage is put in amateurish hands, resulting in painfully obvious use of rear projection when Bogart himself is in the frame, or painfully obvious use of a double wearing a trench coat and fedora.The two powerful scenes occur in the final half hour, and they are noteworthy if only because they remind modern audiences that brutal scenes do not need to be bloody scenes:First, we're in a cargo plane en route back to Japan, and though there is no explicit violence, the danger is palpable because the audience knows that the war criminals on board are capable of absolutely anything. Second, a rare portrayal of seppuku, filmed in a way that relies entirely on the actor's expressions to convey the barbarity of what he is doing to himself — and he succeeds so well that you simultaneously can't take your eyes off his face, and can't stand to watch.Both scenes have far more do with Japanese characters than with Americans, and that is the real strength of this film: The Japanese are not treated as clichés of cruelty-- or of comedy, as they are in the artlessly racist "Lost in Translation" (2003). In "Tokyo Joe," the Japanese are every bit as complex as the Americans, if not more so. Their characters are the losers of the war, after all, the people learning to live, as one of them says, "in shame."

Terrell-4 Joe Barrett sure knows how to woo 'em. Humphrey Bogart made some doozies in the late Forties and early Fifties. He liked to keep working, but either he or his agent had some lousy taste: Chain Lighting (1950). Sirocco (1951). Battle Circus (opposite June Allyson, no less) (1953). Tokyo Joe fits right in. It's not just that these movies are hackwork, but Bogart's iconic mug is showing his age. He was 50 when he made Tokyo Joe. He can snarl, threaten, sneer and go wooing with the best, better, in fact, than the best, but it's Silly Symphonies when he undertakes judo or throws more than one or two punches. With Tokyo Joe we're not just talking stunt doubles. Every shot in Tokyo with a guy in a trench coat wearing a hat where we can't see a face is a fake Bogart. There are a lot of them. Every shot of Bogart facing the camera with Tokyo in the background is just Bogart on a Hollywood sound stage with backscreen projection. There are a lot more of these. All that backscreen stuff is handled carelessly. Like most strong actors, Bogart worked best, in my opinion, when he had strong actors to react with. Tokyo Joe doesn't give him much. Florence Marly is the love interest. She's beautiful, but so icy she could give your lips frostbite. Alexander Knox (Mark Landis), who competes for Florence Marly, was a fine actor, but always so civilized, often stuffy, sometimes weak. What's it all about? Bogie as Joe Barrett returns to Tokyo right after fighting in the last good war to check on the gambling bar, Tokyo Joe's, which he used to own. He'd always felt Tokyo was his home. It's a sad homecoming. The woman he'd married, Trina Pechinkov (Marly), a White Russian émigré in Japan, he'd heard was dead. Instead, she'd been imprisoned. But now she's remarried to Occupation big shot Mark Landis...and she has a daughter. You guessed it, the child is Bogie's and he hadn't known. He wants Trina back. He hooks up with Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa) to start a two-bit freight airline so he can stay in Tokyo and woo Trina away from Landis. From now on we're going to be in a world of deceit, the importing of Japanese war criminals back to Japan, of Bogart wearing a leather flight jacket, fist fights, bowing and ah so-ing, corny patriotic speeches, a precocious child who gets kidnapped...and sacrifice designed to bring a tear or two. The tension between Bogart and Alexander Knox is non-existent. So are the love sparks between Bogart and Marly. Sessue Hayakawa (who was a huge silent screen star in American movies) has a Japanese accent when he speaks his English lines that is so thick it's sometimes difficult to understand the full extent of the Baron's evil plans. That leaves just Bogart to carry the film. He nearly does it...he wasn't Hollywood's most iconic movie star for nothing. (At best, the top icon probably would be a three-way tie with Bogart, Cary Grant and Mickey Mouse.) He even manages to make us forget the tyke he shares some scenes with. On balance, you'll enjoy Bogart, but Tokyo Joe is a movie to keep low on your list of Bogart movies to watch.

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.