Começou em Tóquio

Confusing but entertaining yarn with David Janssen trying to solve the case of a young girl who went missing years before.

Brad Dexter plays a movie star who, as usual, gives off enough vibes to make you suspect he's a rat. His secretary is bumped off, and since she seemed to have an interest in the missing person's case, enter Janssen. Jeanne Crain plays Janssen's old flame. Dina Merrill plays Crain's friend, who ultimately becomes an important part of the case. Everything gets wrapped up in the final ten minutes or so, but it's a bit of a mess getting to that point.

There is some good work by others, including William Demarest as a drunken former reporter who had written about the case, and Jacques Aubuchon, as a mysterious guy who wants Janssen to find his missing brother. It was a little odd seeing Aubuchon in a suit, since I was used to him walking around in native garb as Chief Urulu in "McHale's Navy." Silent screen star Gertrude Astor plays a dead body.

Worth a look, just to see Jeanne Crain in one of the tightest black dresses ever made.

In Hollywood, Julia Joliet is murdered. She's a small time secretary answering fan mail for a movie star. What catches the attention of private investigator Tom Alder is that she has collected clippings from the Doris Delaney case. Delaney was a missing heiress and her parents spared no expense to find her with no success. Alder decides to follow the clue.

I generally like the hard-boiled detective style and this has an intriguing start. I don't particularly like his meandering investigation. It seems a little slow and I'm never sure about his moves. Then it loses me in a flashback. The problem is that the flashback happens without much context since the audience isn't shown the old photographs. She's also a little older than I expect. The case is over a decade old but it may need to double that. It is also very coincidental. It's unlikely that he would be investigating the case without any pictures at the start. The whole thing is a house of cards built on a knife's edge.

The film starts with the murder scene of a woman who manages the fan mail for film star LeRoy Dane. Private detective Tom Alder (David Janssen) is told about the details of the case by a cop friend of his who drops by for a drink. Actually, Alder is a particular kind of private detective - He tracks down the long-lost beneficiaries of estates for a cut of the proceeds.

But the murdered woman's entire estate was less than three thousand dollars, so why the interest? Alder looks around the murder scene late at night - apparently crime scene tape was not in the budget - and finds some old clippings in the murdered woman's apartment concerning a rich couple's 16-year-old daughter who went missing 13 years before. This is what apparently piques his interest, although there is no estate involved, and nobody has hired him, and thus nobody is paying him to do any investigation. And yet he spends more on airlines and hotels than the Beatles on tour as he goes about looking for answers. Along the way he meets a host of colorful characters, none of whom seem related to any of the others, but all with an interest in his investigation. Complications ensue.

The "Big Sleep" this is not, but it has some of the same problems and features, but for its time versus the time of The Big Sleep. It's a great example of an industry in transition - one that is exiting the production code era and entering the swinging sixties. It's just not quite there yet, and it has a great jazz score. But the plot just wanders all over the place.

It scores some in the casting department - William Demarest as a washed-up homicide detective who has turned alcoholic and waxes poetic. And it busts some there too - Brad Dexter looks more like the muscle for the mob than he does some matinee idol that teens go crazy at the sight of. And I always liked Jeanne Craine in her 20th Century Fox vehicles, but she is cringeworthy here as someone from Alder's past who sees him one night in a bar after ten years apart, and then pesters the guy, apparently proud that her breaking his heart years ago caused him to become hard and cynical - at least so she believes.

This certainly should not be classified as a real "thriller" but, as a mystery film it was a decent watch. I was intrigued to hear the story behind special investigator Tom Adler's (David Janssen) American born geisha girl Nicki Kovacs (Dina Merrill). The story has flashback scenes to when Tom Adler was a lieutenant stationed in Japan when he meets Nicki Kovacs at a Japanese nightclub.. Nicki is one of the private dancers/geisha girls at the nightclub who provides the sombre looking Tom with an ear to listen to his woes, and a couch to sleep on overnight. By morning Tom has fallen in love with the mysterious Nicki but he loses touch with his war time crush and over the following decades he cannot get her beautiful mysterious face out of his dreams and thoughts.

Do not expect any James Bond or Mike Hammer physical action scenes as David Janssen is not your action Jackson type of detective. No, Tom Adler is more a wussy heartbroken type of detective who is good at his job at finding missing persons to which his firm gets a handsome reward for finding long lost loved ones. In this film, ironically enough Tom Adler is having a difficult time finding his own long lost love, his American born geisha girl Nicki Kovacs.

No spoiler here. Suffice to say that Twenty Plus Two is a decent mystery film with a decent ending to which I give the film a decent 6 out of 10 rating.

Not everyone liked this film as much as I did, and maybe some were better at second-guessing the ending than I was. I thought the plot was artfully constructed, with the realization of the ending dawning on us gradually, step by step. I didn't detect any false clues, just clues that became more and more revealing as the story went on.

David Janssen and Jeanne Crain put in fine performances, and most of the minor characters did well, too. Agnes Moorehead, who usually has enough presence to fill any role, was not convincing as a Park Avenue blueblood. Her lines didn't help, but it just seemed like she didn't have her heart in the role.

Overall, the writing was good, as was the staging. Unlike some reviewers who found that this seemed more like something written TV, I thought it was well put together.