Tokyo Vice

 

In the late 1990s, Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort), a young American, arrives in Tokyo and begins working as a crime reporter for a major newspaper. He chafes at the paper’s conservative deference to authority and rude editor (Kosuke Toyohara) but finds cautious support among his colleagues, including his direct supervisor Maruyama (Rinko Kikuchi). When an indebted man’s very public suicide catches his attention, Jake makes it his mission to expose the yakuza scheme that led to the debtor’s demise. To do so, Jake forges alliances with police – the vice squad detective Miyamoto (Hideaki Ito) and the organized crime investigator Kitagiri (Ken Watanabe), the local yakuza – young enforcer Sato (Show Kasamatsu) and his boss Ishida (Shun Sugata), and nightclub hostesses/fellow foreigners Samantha (Rachel Keller) and Polina (Ella Rumpf). While Jake works his way to the truth, Sato is forced to step up, Sam must avoid a threat from her past, Katagiri navigates underworld tensions, and Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida) – a ruthless out-of-town yakuza – threatens them all.

 

An adaptation of Adelstein’s engaging-but-disputed memoir had been rumored for years before making its HBO Max debut last month. While its creator J.T. Rogers is better known as a playwright, his television debut has plenty of polish: it helps that Michael Mann directed the first episode. What it lacks in consistency and, in the early episodes, pacing, it makes up for in the breadth of its narrative, its deft use of setting, and its later-episode tension.

 

Despite playing the nominal lead, Elgort is the weak link among the cast. He remains a talented actor, but he’s a poor Jake, matching neither the perception created by the real Adelstein’s authorial voice nor the interest generated by the other characters. Fortunately, Tokyo Vice’s Wire-like crosscut means that Jake-san is rarely relied on to carry an episode. Watanabe delivers low-key brilliance as Katagiri, a warm and jovial father one moment and an unflappable, incorruptible, cagey cop the next. Sato, who sings American pop songs and seems to have genuine feelings for Sam (herself torn between empathy and self-interest), is increasingly unnerved by the violence he is forced to commit, hanging onto his humanity despite his unsavory business. In somewhat predictable fashion, Rogers sways our sympathies toward the Ishida-gumi by making Tozawa (based on real-life yakuza head/Adelstein nemesis Tadamasa Goto) that much worse.

 

Though the cacophony of the club scenes wears thin after a while (this following a dizzyingly impressive depiction in the Mann-helmed debut episode), Tokyo Vice otherwise makes excellent use of its setting. Just as the glitz and allure of Tokyo’s nightlife contrast with the small offices and small apartments shown in the cold light of day, so too do we get a sense of the contradictions and complexities that Jake, despite his strong linguistic fluency, often misreads or struggles to grasp.

 

Some of its narrative beats may be familiar, and its lead is more liability than lure, but all in all, Tokyo Vice’s visual panache and multilayered storytelling can pull you in if you let it. Here’s hoping that a second season follows as there are plenty of stories left to tell.