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| Images courtesy HBO |
Michael Mann fan-folk were most likely ecstatic to hear of his ‘helming’ the new HBO series Tokyo Vice, a look into the underground crime and yakuza of Tokyo.
The series was sold as a Michael Mann show, but he only directed the pilot. Other capable directors took the helm for the remaining seven episodes. Mann’s fingerprints are all over the pilot, which feature this auteur’s style, rhythm, and bombast-less intensity. Half of the episodes are directed by Japanese-Hungarian director Josef Kubota-Wladyka, with the other three episodes directed by HBO producer/director extraordinaire Alan Poul (Six Feet Under, The Newsroom, etc.) and writer/director Hikari. So this adds up to the majority of the episodes being directed by Japanese directors, which works well towards letting people of color tell their own stories.
The remaining episodes don’t quite match Mann’s intensity in the pilot, but they tell a compelling fish out of water story that explores the roles of yakuza and gaijin (foreigner) in Tokyo. Other main characters include American ex-pat, modern-day, geisha Samantha; young, come-from-nothing yakuza Sato; an incorruptible police detective Hiroto Katagiri (played by Ken Watanabe); longsuffering newspaper editor Eimi (played by the amazing Rinko Kikuchi); and swaggering, libidinous detective Jin Miyamoto.
Each of the characters interact in a plot that delves into varying levels of involvement/entanglement with the yakuza and what those different entanglements cost. Some of the characters fit some well-known archetypes, but one particular backstory was something I’d never seen before and was refreshing.
Ansel Elgort, love him or hate him, plays the cocky, a-head-taller-than-everyone American who passes a strenuous entrance exam to be hired at Meicho Shinbun, a prestigious Tokyo newspaper. Elgort’s character, Jake Adelstein, wrote the eponymous memoir the series is loosely based on. Adelstein, sometimes too often, tells someone on the show that he wants to write about ‘what’s really going on’ in Tokyo. Interestingly enough, Adelstein was the first non-Japanese person hired as a reporter at Meicho.
Since the memoir was set in the '90s, the series becomes a period piece, which seems strange to consider something that’s 30 years old to be period. But it works well with everyone smoking indoors and listening to Sixpence None The Richer and The Backstreet Boys. The neon-lit streets and alleyways of Tokyo seem timeless, though, as much of the events of the series take place at night in various clubs, alleys, and industrial areas.
Fans of director Mann might be disappointed that his distinct style isn’t as present in the majority of the series, but the pilot helps set the tone for the other episodes. Mann has excelled in both sweeping epic crime dramas (Heat) and also smaller, three-character crime stories (Collateral), and his style can work well to tell a version of Adelstein’s memoir.
No announcements have been made as far as renewal, but the series both begins and ends in a way that sets up a future season, with unresolved plot threads left dangling. All episodes are currently streaming on HBO.
-Eric Beach