Stopover Tokyo

What the previous commenter says about the movie is basically true--this is simply an escapist picture-postcard movie with a bad, clumsy script. The action, what there is of it, makes no particular sense and the romance is dull and pointless. Some lines of dialogue, like the one about "no paragraph about Welshmen" (used twice!) are actually stupid. However, the commenter also went over the top himself when discussing the movie's condescension. Robert Wagner doesn't say "Ah, Madame Butterfly" to a waitress. She's not a waitress, she's a famous Japanese diva that he met on the flight to Japan, and it's explained in the first scene that she's known for playing Butterfly. So there's nothing condescending or inappropriate about it, but this detail is so clumsily placed (like everything else) that I can't blame the viewer for misunderstanding it.

"Mark Fannon" (Robert Wagner) is on his way from San Francisco to Seoul when he is told that he has to stay in Tokyo because he has no Letter of Entry to go any further. At least that is what he wants people to believe. In reality, Mark is a mid-level secret agent who is on an assignment to deliver some coded information concealed in some magazines to another agent named "Mr. Nobika" (Solly Nakamura). It's then that he learns about an assassination plot on an as yet unknown person by communists agents. Not long afterward he is almost killed and a day later Mr. Nokika is shot to death--leaving a young daughter named "Koko" (Reiko Oyama) as an orphan. Needless to say, his first concern is to find a way to take care of Koko while at the same time trying to obtain the magazines that he gave to Mr. Nobika before the communists can get their hands on it. It's at this time that a young woman by the name of "Tina Llewellyn" (Joan Collins) gets involved due to her romantic relationship to another American agent named "Tony Barrett" (Ken Scott) who happens to be a mutual acquaintance of Mark. But with so many things going on it now becomes a race to find out who the communists intend to kill in order to somehow stop the assassination. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a film that definitely had potential due to a reasonably good cast and plot but the lackluster script and the director (Richard L. Breen) simply proved inadequate for the task at hand. Likewise, the lack of chemistry between Robert Wagner and Joan Collins certainly didn't help either. In any case, while I don't necessarily consider this to be a bad movie by any means, it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been and because of that I have rated it accordingly. Average.

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

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.

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.