Escala em Tokyo

It could have been good. An attractive cast .Great location photography. Exotic setting . BUT somehow this film is dull dull dull. I'm not sure of the reason. The dialogue is so tedious and stiffly delivered that individual scenes seem to take a century. Then there's the grotesque over acting of, the usually reliable, Edmund O'Brien, who is here reduced to a terrible Bogart impersonation. Like a vampire . Like a Bela Lugosi, jowly vampire, he sucks the life out of every scene he's in. Joan Collins, a beautiful woman, is photographed to look like Queen Elizabeth the second, and Robert Wagner can't project beyond his wavy hair.

Stopover Tokyo from 1957 is a film based on a Mr. Moto story, if you can believe it, and stars Robert Wagner, Joan Collins, Edmond O'Brien, and Larry Keating.

Wagner plays Mark Fannon, who plays an intelligence agent who goes to Tokyo to stop the assassination of the American High Commissioner (Keating) at a ceremony for eternal peace. Joan Collins works as a ticket agent at the airport, and she seems to keep pretty loose hours.

Edmond O'Brien poses as an American businessman, but in reality, he's on the side of the Communists and wants to make sure the assassination takes place.

The film is in beautiful color with wonderful location shots, and let's face it, the stars are pretty dazzling too. However, the film is boring. It seems to have cost some money, but little attention was given to the script.

It is hard for me to believe that Joan Collins was scheduled to play Cleopatra when you realize what 20th Century Fox threw at her, including Sea Wife and The Wayward Bus. However, probably by the time of Cleopatra, her stock had risen somewhat.

You know, I'd say that about the only thing that could've possibly saved this piffling, little, 1957,"soap-opera-of-an-espionage-movie" from sinking under that sheer weight of its stars' inflated egos would've been the crucial appearance of everyone's favorite 50-meter monster, Godzilla.

Yeah. If Godzilla had suddenly shown up on the scene (and, once more, crushed Tokyo, but good, with his big, clumsy feet) that would've been a deliciously perfect way to generate some desperately needed interest for the likes of this utterly dry, drab and thoroughly sappy melodrama.

I would've loved to have seen actors like pretty-boy Robert Wagner, and cute-kittenish Joan Collins, and bored-bloated Edmond O'Brien running for their very lives down the streets of Tokyo while being hotly pursued by good, old Godzilla.

Believe me, Stopover Tokyo really was that bloody boring. And only an appearance by Godzilla could've saved it.

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.

Stop Over Tokyo! Very Nice Movie! The Photography is unforgettable! Kohko is great!