After the end of the war, Joe Barrett (Humphrey Bogart) returns to Tokyo to inspect his business, Tokyo Joe’s.
What is supposed to be a business trip turns personal when Joe learns that his wife Trina (Florence Marly) survived the war - and they share a child.
While Joe tries to reconnect with his (remarried) spouse, he has to find a reason to stay in Japan after his visa expires.
He ends up making a deal with Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa), a former member of the fallen regime, to create an airline freight company.
Following this association, Joe quickly finds himself in the middle of an underground battle for supremacy, between the occupying forces, and Kimura’s allies from the wartime government.
Can he save his family before this little corner of the Cold War turns hot?
I had a conversation with a friend about these Bogart movies - which they have not seen - and how I was finding the obscure titles more interesting to write about.
Watching all of these movies in a row, I am continually surprised by how long the shadow of Casablanca had over his career.
Sirocco, released two years after Tokyo Joe, is an obvious re-heating of the 1942 picture, and so is this one.
A good example of how star personae are built on repeating similar characters - to its credit, Tokyo Joe is a slight deviation.
Like Rick, Bogart’s character, Joe, owns a bar, and is in love with a woman who is married to someone else.
In contrast to Sirocco, Joe feels like a revisionary take on Bogart’s most iconic role: unlike Rick, he abandoned his wife; when he returns to Japan, he is keen to reconnect with old friends and live in Japan; he is less alien, and at ease; the club is no longer his, and does not provide a refuge.
Unlike the lovers of Casablanca, Joe’s stake in the relationship with Trina (Florence Marly) is not purely romantic - he learns she was pregnant when he left, and he now has a daughter.
Unlike the more glamorous loner Rick, Joe is truly isolated from everyone he used to know.
One thing I did not bring up in my previous Bogart reviews was how both The African Queen and Beat the Devil gave the star opportunities to stretch and play with his persona.
Bogie could play the cynical, caustic outsider with hidden humanity without breaking a sweat, and there is a sense with this miniseries, thinking chronologically, that he was struggling to find projects which played off that persona and gave him a chance to stretch.
Sirocco is an interesting, flawed movie, but Bogart’s character and performance feel too familiar - as though the filmmakers were more concerned with playing to expectations. Perversely, both Sirocco and Tokyo Joe were productions for Bogart’s Santana Productions, so maybe the creativity was mitigated by a desire to appeal to his established audience.
A similar sense of lethargy affects Stuart Heisler’s Tokyo Joe.
Released two years before Sirocco (three before The African Queen), the film features Bogart as another stranger in a strange land - in this case, occupied Japan in 1949.
While it shares similarities with Casablanca and other Bogart adventures, Tokyo Joe feels like a dry-run for future trends in Hollywood action cinema.
A forerunner to every ‘white guy knows martial arts’ action movie, Tokyo Joe needs a couple more action scenes and it could have starred Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.
The film features two scenes in which Humphrey Bogart’s character shows his expertise in judo - in the first, he engages in a playful bout with his friend and business partner Ito (Teru Shimada, Osata from You Only Live Twice). This is called back when he defeats the villain’s main henchman during the climax.
Despite the title, and Joe’s knowledge and past history with the country, this movie has a weird detachment from its setting
Joe owns a business, has a Japanese friend, knows martial arts and speaks Japanese. However, his key relationship is with Trina, a white woman, and the only Japanese character who has more agency than him is the villain, Kimura (played by silent era sex symbol Sessue Hayakawa). However he seems to be separated from the world he has supposedly embraced.
This extends to the production: Bogart never leaves Hollywood - his double (shown from behind) wanders through Tokyo (he is also replaced by an obvious stuntman for the wide shots of the fight scenes, but that is not surprising).
A bit slow and ponderous, Tokyo Joe is more promising than fun to watch.
I am glad The African Queen was programmed ahead of this film - knowing Bogart would not be stuck in the same archetype for long made this viewing feel like less of a slog.
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