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.

flask "Stopover Tokyo" is a loose adaptation of John P. Marquand's famous novel, "Right You Are, Mr. Moto," the final entry in the Mr. Moto literary series. In the novel, two American intelligence agents, Jack Rhyce and Ruth Bogart, land in Tokyo on a secret CIA mission. Mr. Moto greets them at the airport and, together, the trio unmasks a dangerous international spy ring. Sadly, Marquand's briskly-paced novel has little in common with this lackluster film.In true Hollywood fashion, the plot of the novel was largely discarded in its transition to the big screen. In the film, the intrepid American hero is renamed Mark Fannon and he is glibly portrayed by Robert Wagner with a wavy '50s pompadour. Fannon is a flippant code clerk in American counterintelligence who is sent to Tokyo on a routine courier mission. He soon uncovers an assassination plot hatched by crazed American communist George Underwood (Edmond O'Brien). Fannon races against time to stop the assassination, but the suspense quickly fizzles as the film's ending is boringly anti-climactic.The ending of the original novel is far more poignant. In the novel, Communist agents kidnap the romance interest, Ruth Bogart, and throw her out of a high window. She plummets to her death, and the guilt-ridden hero resigns from the CIA. Yet, in this film, the skilled female operative of the novel has been downgraded to Welsh airport clerk Tina Llewellyn (Joan Collins). Collins imbues her character with a superficial triteness that oddly complements the film's dull script.Overall, "Stopover Tokyo" is ploddingly slow and is similar to John Wayne's "Big Jim McLain" (1952) with the macho American agent thwarting evil Communists in the Pacific. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese characters are condescendingly stereotyped as child-like individuals who easily understand American slang, yet speak in Pidgin English. If you enjoy these types of movies, I suggest the vastly superior "Blood on the Sun" (1945) with James Cagney and Sylvia Sydney battling the Imperial secret police in prewar Japan.