Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

bensonmum2 Stopover Tokyo tells the story of a US Secret Agent named Mark Fannon (Robert Wagner). He's sent to Japan to foil a communist plot to assassinate the American High Commissioner. His main contact is murdered soon after he arrives. Before Mark can stop the assassination, he gets himself tangled in a love-triangle with a fellow agent and a woman named Tina (Joan Collins). Stopover Tokyo is one exceptionally dull movie. It took me almost three viewings to get through the thing – I kept falling asleep. For an espionage film, there's very little action. Until the last few minutes of the movie, the most exciting thing I can remember was Mark being locked in a steam room. Not exactly a thrill a minute. I could forgive the lack of action if the rest of the movie was good – which it's not. The Mark/Tina relationship is about as boring as everything going on around them. Robert Wagner is a fine actor. I've enjoyed his work in a number of things he's done over the years. And Joan Collins is one of the most criminally underrated actresses to ever work in film. But here, they look about as disinterested as I was. Maybe it was the dull screenplay or the uninventive direction, whatever, they look bored. The only reason I haven't rated the film lower is for some wonderful post-WWII Japanese photography. Really nice stuff.

King_man Given its location filming and, while not quite A-list, serviceable cast, this film is a major disappointment. The plot is one that normally is associated with a thriller: A government courier's point of contact is murdered and with the aid of a beautiful women whom he has just met, take up solving the murder and stopping the plot behind the murder. But it's not a thriller, not a mystery, not much of anything. With Breen providing both the screenplay and direction, it's difficult to determine in which role he failed more epically. The movie runs 100 minutes but feels interminable, primarily because so little happens in that time. There are numerous plot threads that lead nowhere but eat up the minutes. Principal among these is with the murder victim's young daughter. Wagner meets her at her house and after killing time going room-to-room with her doing small talk, he puts her to bed while giving her a "your father is dead" speech only to have her fall asleep leaving this speech to be repeated later in the movie. Finally Wagner gets to what he intended to do when he arrived, search the house. The plot line finally makes some plot progress when O'Brien shows up just long enough to put Wagner on the scent. So 5 minutes unnecessary setup for that particular scene. And then it's introducing the Koko to Collins and putting her to bed there. And then bringing Koko back to Collins at film's end where Wagner says goodbye to her after again going through the "your father's dead" speech. Probably 15 minutes could have been saved by just eliminating the role and having O'Brien show up while Wagner was searching the house. Having mentioned Collins, her role is equally as irrelevant as written. There really isn't much romance and she's mainly around to make phone calls. Which then gets to Ken Scott. He's in and out of the script and the country as well. He's there mainly to provide the third side of a romantic triangle except there really isn't a triangle because there's minimal romance. Collins heaves Scott over the side for Wagner but accepts neither of them is going to fall for any women because their work is more important to them than any woman. So Wagner and Scott are off to the wild blue yonder leaving Collins and Koko behind with Collins having to deal with what to do with Koko. A fitting ending for a dismal movie.The location filming and some mid-level stars show this wasn't a tiny budget production but Breen the director couldn't see that Breen the writer had thrown in a lot of needless fat. Dumping the Koko line, adding some intrigue, spicing up the romance and love triangle (or better still, just eliminating Scott's role entirely) and this wouldn't have been a blot on the careers of all involved. With more night shooting and some rewriting (OK, I understand, it has color photography), this could even have been a good noir film. As it is though, it's far too tedious for any enjoyment and an exercise in how to choke the life out of an intrigue / mystery film.

dinky-4 Previous reviews have accurately pointed out the weaknesses of this film which has been attractively photographed in Japanese locations. Alas, one aspect of the photography only adds to the film's torpor. Too often, dialog is carried out by two characters, one of them on the left side of the CinemaScope screen and the other on the right. The lack of close-ups and a minimum of editing tend to make these scenes stiff and lifeless.However, there is an extended sequence in a steam-room in which Robert Wagner and Ken Scott are seen with white towels wrapped around their waists. As "beefcake" goes, it's not all that much, but, hey, you take your pleasures wherever you can find 'em.

michael.e.barrett What the previous commenter says about the movie is basically true--this is simply an escapist picture-postcard movie with a bad, clumsy script. The action, what there is of it, makes no particular sense and the romance is dull and pointless. Some lines of dialogue, like the one about "no paragraph about Welshmen" (used twice!) are actually stupid. However, the commenter also went over the top himself when discussing the movie's condescension. Robert Wagner doesn't say "Ah, Madame Butterfly" to a waitress. She's not a waitress, she's a famous Japanese diva that he met on the flight to Japan, and it's explained in the first scene that she's known for playing Butterfly. So there's nothing condescending or inappropriate about it, but this detail is so clumsily placed (like everything else) that I can't blame the viewer for misunderstanding it.