CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Odelecol
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
bkoganbing
With a little bit of a bow to Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Mr. Moto's Last Warning has Peter Lorre going undercover at Port Said to help prevent disaster at the Suez Canal. As a member of the International Police (Interpol) Lorre goes in disguise as a harmless Japanese antique dealer to prevent skulduggery by Ricardo Cortez, George Sanders and assorted henchmen.Cortez plays a music hall entertainer, a ventriloquist to be precise in the pay of a mysterious foreign power. The idea is to set off some undersea mines they've planted just as the French Fleet is going through the canal and get a nice incident going between Great Britain and France. After all as we learn in the film as long as the British and French stay friendly there can be no war. It's good to remember that the Japanese while at war in China had not yet made an alliance with Germany and Italy. So in 1939 a film could still be made about a Japanese operative saving the British and French alliance.Cortez is a very clever villain and Lorre gives himself away when he goes to the aid of Robert Coote playing a silly English agent who gets mugged. No mild little antique dealer could know judo like that as Cortez correctly surmises.Of course Lorre saves the day, but it's a close run thing. Mr. Moto's Last Warning is a nicely paced, action packed film and actually correct for its time.
Terrell-4
By now the Mr. Moto series was becoming no more than the Saturday matinée filler Peter Lorre knew it would be. The greatest interest in Mr. Moto's Last Warning lies in keeping track of how many deaths Mr. Moto will cause in the pursuit of his kind of justice. By my count it was a draw with the bad guys, with one ringer thrown in. Please note that elements of the plot are discussed. We're in Egypt and an unknown country is plotting to create an incident involving the Suez Canal that will have France and Britain at each other's throats. A master criminal and his gang, taking orders from this nameless country, will set mines at the entrance of the Canal. When the French fleet starts to pass though...kablooie! False evidence will point to Britain. However, Kentaro Moto of the International Police has been working to expose this plot for weeks. He knows the master criminal is in fact Fabian the Great (Ricardo Cortez), a smooth, quick-thinking and ruthless individual posing as a ventriloquist at a seedy Egyptian music hall. It would be hard to decide which is worse, Fabian's utter lack of scruple or George Sanders' awful German accent. (He plays Eric Novel, who tends to show up too often at places he shouldn't be.) Moto quickly finds he is alone. Every time he thinks he can call for assistance, death gets in the way. Finally, with only a foolish Englishman, played to perfection by Robert Coote, to help, Moto prevails and world peace is insured for a few more weeks. (The movie was made in 1939) Peter Lorre continues to do a fine job as Kentaro Moto. He gives Moto an interesting blend of innocence, shrewdness and ruthlessness. Ricardo Cortez, a great success as a leading man in the silent movies, was by now doing movies like this. He may be a stolid actor, but he still is interesting enough to carry the role without breaking a sweat. George Sanders, however, is just about as bad as his accent. My heart, however, was captured by Virginia Field as Connie, proprietor of Connie's Place, a seedy dive. Connie loves Fabian too much but at least she can tell the difference between right (smuggling) and wrong (blowing up the French fleet). Field plays Connie as a kind of dime-store version of Joan Blondell...blond, plump, good-hearted and luscious. For those who also like to keep score, here's what I came up with. Caused by the bad guys: Death by knifing; death by diving bell. Caused by Kentaro Moto: Death by judo chop; death by too much Suez water. Caused by the ringer: Death by bullet into the chest.
zsenorsock
The print I saw of this film was grainy and dark, but I still enjoyed seeing Lorre as Mr.Moto again. The film's highlights include Moto showing off his jujitsu, foiling saboteurs, and the early underwater photography. I also found very interesting Robert Coote's impression of Harold Lloyd as he played the awkward Venable. It's really good. At times Coote seems to be channeling Lloyd to the point where you wonder whether Harold didn't take legal action. In any case, this distraction makes him much less irritating than many detective's comedy sidekicks.Also quite interesting: the ending of this film is very tongue in cheek and anticipates almost the exact same ending in the Hope-Crosby vehicle "Road to Rio" shot ten years later.
rolandwinters
I think this is one of the best Moto films, with a lot of action. Peter Lorre does a good job alternating between the role of Moto and his disguise role as the meek shopkeeper. A group of spies in Port Said are trying to blow up the French fleet and make it look like England is to blame, thus provoking a war. The leader of the spy ring works as a ventriloquist at the local theater, and the gang works out of a sleazy bar run by a naive Englishwoman. The viewers never precisely find out what nation is employing the spy ring, but at the very end of the film Mr. Moto finds the breakthrough clue hidden in the ventriloquist's dummy. Mr Moto then makes the ventriloquist's dummy talk, saying "Don't talk Mr. Moto, or you may lose your job". Since Mr. Moto works for Japan, the final line in the movie may imply that Japan was behind the spy plot.
