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An absolute waste of money

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.