TOKYO VICE SERIES REVIEW

His skin was as white as his linen shirt when the tall man stepped onto the wet, neon drenched streets of Tokyo. If you ask him, he’s the best gaijin reporter that ever cast his shadow upon the street’s of Japan’s capital city. If you ask anybody else, he’s the ONLY gaijin reporter that ever cast his shadow upon the streets of Japan’s capital city. There are a million stories in Tokyo and somebody has to tell them.

The 8-episode HBO Max series, Tokyo Vice, based on a story that Jake Adelstein alleges is true involves him embedding himself among both police officers and dangerous Yakuza to help him in his quest to be the first American working as a Japanese language crime reporter. However a recent article from The Hollywood Reporter has called the veracity of some of Adelstein’s story suspect. The series, produced by Michael Mann who also directed Tokyo Vice‘s pilot, further blends the line between truth and fiction as it plays fast and loose with the source material. Controversial actor Ansel Elgort fails to impress the Screener Squad panel as the series lead, but does a superior performance by actor Ken Watanabe make up for it? Will the panel be lining up for season 2? The series drips with neo-noir stylings, hard boiled characters, and a parade of plot points and threads that it will need another season to answer. Check in with Trevor, Matt, and Eliot as they open a dirty can of Gary Stew as trying to get to the bottom of Tokyo Vice.

WATCH HERE

CREATED BY: J.T. Rogers

STARRING: Ansel Elgort, Ken Watanabe, Rachel Keller, Hideaki Itō, Show Kasamatsu, Ella Rumpf, Rinko Kikuchi, Tomohisa Yamashita, Kōsuke Toyohara, Takaki Uda, Kosuke Tanaka, Masato Hagiwara, Shun Sugata, Eugene Nomura, Koshi Uehara, Masayoshi Haneda, Noémie Nakai, Ayumi Tanida, Kazuya Tanabe, Jundai Yamada, Yuka Itaya, Sarah Sawyer, Fumiya Kimura, Nanami Kawakami, Ayumi Ito, Jessica Hecht, Hiroshi Sogabe, Motoki Kobayashi

 

YOUR REVIEWERS

 

Trevor Trujillo (Screener Squad)

Trevor T. Trujillo is a One Of Us contributor in addition to being the co-host, co-founder, and co-producer of the Nighthawks Podcast. Trevor’s 17-year media career spans multiple arenas including television, radio, podcasting, and online journalism; and he is currently the editor-in-chief for a regional online news provider in the Rocky Mountain West. Often a nomad, Trevor has found himself “at home” in places like Austin, Texas; West Hollywood, California; and throughout central and southeastern Wyoming. Get the pause button ready, Trevor also manages to pop up in blink-and-you’ll-miss-them featured extra roles in Nickelodeon’s FRED, TruTV’s OPERATION REPO and the Todd Rohal/Zack Carlson short THE SUPLEX DUPLEX COMPLEX.

 

 

Matt Foster (Screener Squad)

Matt Foster is a stand up comic, podcaster, and movie critic currently living in the greater Salt Lake City area. His lifelong love of genre film began early, when he realized they freaked out his mom. He performs (epidemics permitting) regularly on Dungeons and Comedy, a DND live play with standup comedians, and is the slightly less mustache-y half of the Nighthawks Podcast, a cinema-centric discussion cohosted by Trevor T. Trujillo.

 

 

 

Eliot Nelson (Screener Squad, Staff Writer)

Soaked in the soggy rains of Seattle, Eliot developed a love of sci-fi, movies, cartoons, heavy metal, and all of geekdom. Pursuing his passion for the written word, he got his BA from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.