Here's an oddity for a film noir: color and made in Japan and (at least with the DVD) stereo sound. The fact that's color would disqualify it from some purist's list of film noirs, but that's another subject matter.
Without Robert Ryan, this would have been a yawner of film noir, not one of the better ones, especially for director Sam Fuller, who has done a lot better than this film. At least Ryan keeps it from being a complete disaster. He almost always played a villain on film and he's that here, too, but in here he is unusually low key. That's what made him to interesting to me. I don't think he raised his voice, just talked as calmly as can be but inside was a ruthless SOB.
In this story, Ryan was head of a mob operating in Japan about 10 years after the end of World War II. Robert Stack plays a U.S. government agent sent to Japan to infiltrate Ryan's mob and Shirley Yamaguchi is his love interest. Both of them are "fair" in here, nothing memorable, which pretty much describes the movie.
Without Robert Ryan, this would have been a yawner of film noir, not one of the better ones, especially for director Sam Fuller, who has done a lot better than this film. At least Ryan keeps it from being a complete disaster. He almost always played a villain on film and he's that here, too, but in here he is unusually low key. That's what made him to interesting to me. I don't think he raised his voice, just talked as calmly as can be but inside was a ruthless SOB.
In this story, Ryan was head of a mob operating in Japan about 10 years after the end of World War II. Robert Stack plays a U.S. government agent sent to Japan to infiltrate Ryan's mob and Shirley Yamaguchi is his love interest. Both of them are "fair" in here, nothing memorable, which pretty much describes the movie.