“Tokyo Vice,” HBO Max’s new neon-soaked series set in Japan’s largest city in 1999, is an investigative journalism story mixed with a mafia murder plot all rolled up into a gritty neo- noir. As a fan of noir films and books, investigative journalism deep dives and Japanese literature, the chances I’d enjoy this show were extremely high – and it didn’t disappoint.
At one point in the show, two characters even recite some haiku by my favorite Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. It seems like my only interests not featured in the show’s first three episodes are baseball, which is huge in Japan (actually there is a batting cage scene), and Phish, who toured Japan in 1999. So, there’s still hope for “Tokyo Vice” to completely check all my “personal favorite” boxes.
The series is sort of like “All the President’s Men” and “Zodiac” meets “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas,” with a little bit of “Lost in Translation” added to the mix.
HBO Max rolled out the eight-episode crime drama with a bang on April 7 by releasing three nearly hourlong episodes. HBO Max will release two episodes each Thursday until the finale is released on April 28.
Like a lot of good noir, “Tokyo Vice” leans into certain tropes while establishing a unique angle to tell its story.
“Tokyo Vice” is loosely based on journalist Jake Adelstein’s 2009 memoir “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.” The series follows a fictional version Adelstein (played by Ansel Elgort, “West Side Story”), an expat rookie reporter for the largest newspaper in Japan, as he finds his footing and searches for a big, meaningful story to write. In real life, and in the show, Adelstein was the first U.S. citizen to be hired as a reporter for a Japanese newspaper, written in Japanese, which uncovered the secrets of the Japanese underworld and the yakuza, the Japanese mafia.
Elgort does a good job portraying Adelstein as a little awkward and naive, but ambitious, earnest and idealistic. In the second episode, Adelstein relates to another young reporter how his coroner father’s words inspired him to become a reporter: “Every day the knowledge of the world increases a little bit, and this newspaper is a record of that.” Then he adds: “And that’s what we get to do. We get to increase the world’s knowledge every day.”
The pilot episode was directed by perhaps the most qualified person to helm a crime and journalism series to feature the name of a city and the word vice in the title: Michael Mann. Mann produced “Miami Vice” (the TV series) and directed “Miami Vice” the 2006 movie. More relevantly, he directed the crime films “Thief” (1981), “Manhunter” (1986) “Heat” (1995) and “The Insider” (1999) about journalists and the tobacco industry.
Mann does an excellent job setting the scene by throwing us directly into a tense showdown between Adelstein, detective Hiroto Katagari (Ken Watanabe, “The Last Samurai,” “Godzilla”) and some yakuza gang members. Then, the show flashes back two years to 1999, where the action of the first three episodes takes place, to provide some of Adelstein’s backstory while showcasing the cool, dramatic noir landscape of Tokyo nightlife. “Tokyo Vice” also features Rachel Keller (the TV series “Fargo”) as Samantha, an expat working as a hostess in a nightclub, and Sho Kasamatsu as Sato, a rising yakuza member.
The real story begins when Adelstein shows up to cover a crime scene where a man has been stabbed with a sword, only to be told later by a cop, “there is no murder in Japan.” Later, Adelstein sees a man commit suicide by lighting himself on fire in public and discovers what he thinks is a connection between the two incidents. Like any dogged reporter, Adelstein isn’t deterred so easily. Despite his superiors’ wishes to write only what the police tell him, he begins to investigate the suspicious deaths and finds sources in the Tokyo police department and the underbelly of the city.
Like a good piece of investigative journalism, “Tokyo Vice” hooks you with its lede – a journalism term for a story’s beginning – then turns on a flashlight and leads you into a dark world you didn’t know existed.
Mike Andrelczyk is an LNP staff writer. “Unscripted” is a weekly entertainment column produced by a rotating team of writers.
