GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

bensonmum2 Stopover Tokyo tells the story of a US Secret Agent named Mark Fannon (Robert Wagner). He's sent to Japan to foil a communist plot to assassinate the American High Commissioner. His main contact is murdered soon after he arrives. Before Mark can stop the assassination, he gets himself tangled in a love-triangle with a fellow agent and a woman named Tina (Joan Collins). Stopover Tokyo is one exceptionally dull movie. It took me almost three viewings to get through the thing – I kept falling asleep. For an espionage film, there's very little action. Until the last few minutes of the movie, the most exciting thing I can remember was Mark being locked in a steam room. Not exactly a thrill a minute. I could forgive the lack of action if the rest of the movie was good – which it's not. The Mark/Tina relationship is about as boring as everything going on around them. Robert Wagner is a fine actor. I've enjoyed his work in a number of things he's done over the years. And Joan Collins is one of the most criminally underrated actresses to ever work in film. But here, they look about as disinterested as I was. Maybe it was the dull screenplay or the uninventive direction, whatever, they look bored. The only reason I haven't rated the film lower is for some wonderful post-WWII Japanese photography. Really nice stuff.

davidandrews27 It's a 1950s Cinemascope film with Robert Wagner, and it's our first chance to see him in a modern-dress picture since the excellent A Kiss Before Dying. The decor and locations are similarly eye-worthy to Kiss, but the photography is toned down and some sets made to look shopworn to suggest a recovering Japan, at which the film succeeds. The clothes and automobiles more than compensate.Stopover Tokyo is memorable for being the one that Joan Collins was contractually obligated to appear in after the studio's promise that she would work with Roberto Rossellini fell through. Was anyone expecting genius from a film adapted from a Mr. Moto novel to satisfy another contractual obligation? Just enjoy the ride, its a post-war film as aesthetically satisfying as The Crimson Kimono, without the burden of pretentious auteur direction. (They thought so little of it that they let the screenwriter direct.)If you want a better Wagner film in Cinemascope, see A Kiss Before Dying. If you want a better Joan Collins role, see Turn the Key Softly. Otherwise, stop blaming everything on Edmond O'Brien.

dinky-4 Previous reviews have accurately pointed out the weaknesses of this film which has been attractively photographed in Japanese locations. Alas, one aspect of the photography only adds to the film's torpor. Too often, dialog is carried out by two characters, one of them on the left side of the CinemaScope screen and the other on the right. The lack of close-ups and a minimum of editing tend to make these scenes stiff and lifeless.However, there is an extended sequence in a steam-room in which Robert Wagner and Ken Scott are seen with white towels wrapped around their waists. As "beefcake" goes, it's not all that much, but, hey, you take your pleasures wherever you can find 'em.

bkoganbing 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.