Michael Mann Returns to Television with HBO MAX’s Tokyo Vice

It’s been seven full years since the great Michael Mann directed the sadly overlooked technothriller Blackhat in 2015. While Mann has circled several projects since then, the first to come to fruition is the fact-based Tokyo Vice on HBO MAX starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe.

As is Mann’s standard, he drops us into a scene already in progress with Jake Adelstein (Elgort) and Hiroto (Watanabe) taking a meeting with what appears to be members of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. All the hallmarks of a Mann film are on display immediately: sharp visuals, over-the-shoulder voyeuristic camera angles, and a palpable sense of danger in even the most mundane activities, such as ascending a staircase or taking a seat at a posh restaurant.

Mann has always been good with dialogue between men (think of the coffee break between Pacino and DeNiro in HEAT), but he’s even better with letting you inside his character’s minds, making you aware of just how much their gears are grinding. While Mann himself only directs the pilot, his filmmaking style and sensibilities are maintained flawlessly in subsequent episodes by the very talented director of Catch The Fair One, Josef Kubota Wladyka, who helms episodes two and three.

As the opening scene reaches what would appear to be a critical moment, the timeline shifts to two years earlier. We see Elgort as an English teacher in Tokyo—teaching class, training at a martial arts dojo, and preparing for an exam to qualify to work at Meicho Shimbun, Tokyo’s most significant newspaper.

As we see Elgort’s character (Jake Adelstein) relentlessly soaking up the nightlife and culture of Tokyo in 1999, we soon learn that while he may be learning all the steps, he doesn’t quite hear the music. Upon becoming the first foreigner to become a crime beat writer (the lowest rung on the totem) at Meicho, his built-in nature as an American rears its head as he pushes against the strict rules of the paper as well as his hard-as-a-cinder-block editor, Eimi, played by the wonderful Rinko Kikuchi.

Jake finds a connection between two seemingly separate deaths and seeks to follow them to their natural end as any dedicated investigative reporter in the US might. The trouble is, Jake isn’t in the US, and his ambition reads like insolence to Eimi and the higher ups at Meicho.

Thus begins a culture clash between a young American so eager to ingratiate himself into a culture, that he checks off all the boxes while missing all the grace notes.

This is Mann’s fifth foray into series television. While most of us think of him as a film director first, it was 1984’s Miami Vice that first put him on the pop culture map and led to greater opportunities for the distinctive filmmaker. Mann followed Miami Vice with the well-regarded Crime Story starring Dennis Farina, the short-lived Robbery Homicide Division, and the Brilliant horse racing drama Luck on HBO (shut down prematurely due to the inability to keep the horses safe, and Mann’s unwillingness to use shortcuts in filming the races).

Despite its name, Tokyo Vice has no connection or similarity in vibe to the Miami-based ‘80s artifact that sparked pastel fashion trends and popularized the stubble look on the faces of men everywhere. Tokyo Vice is a mixture of the crusading journalist genre bumping up against a police procedural. Mixed into all this is a fish-out-of-water tale about a fish who refuses to believe he’s out of water—although by episode three, Jake’s recognition of how in over his head he is begins to make an appearance.

Elgort’s somewhat slightly dazed natural expression works well for him in the lead role. While his character may have too much confidence, he’s constantly thrust into situations where his certainty is tested and his efforts to be fast on his feet slam up against the brick wall of the newspaper’s rigid structure.

The series goes to great pains to show all the difficulties of getting a story to print: wearing out shoe leather chasing down (or in one amusing sequence, being chased down by) sources, the writing, the re-writing, the hard-won approval, and then, the consequences of getting a story wrong. Even writing up a piece on a panty thief is fraught with peril and strife.

As an actor, Elgort has never resonated with me before, but actors (particularly men) don’t give bad performances in Mann productions, and based on the first three episodes of Tokyo Vice, that streak continues here. Simply said, Elgort is terrific.

Rachel Keller also shines as Samantha, a wiser than her years hostess who knows what buttons to push and what levers to pull to connect powerful men with other powerful men—typically by procuring beautiful women for their pleasure. Samatha’s connections are essential to Adelstein and she soon becomes a source for the fledgling reporter.

Best of all is the great Japanese actor Ken Watanabe as Hiroto, a Vice cop whose own investigation intersects with Jake’s. Watanabe’s world-weary expressions speak volumes with just a raised eyebrow or a slow turn of the head. By episode three, we see Hiroto becoming Jake’s de facto mentor and supplier of scoops.

Beyond the look, feel, and bravura cinematic depiction of the storyline, what’s equally remarkable is knowing that all of what happens, well, really happened. It might be easy to look at Tokyo Vice and say, “Here we go again, another story about a white guy infiltrating another culture, when who we should be following are those native to that culture.”

But a quick scan of the career of the real Jake Adelstein is so extraordinary that not to tell his story, which lends itself so well to dramatization, would be a form of artistic malpractice.

For your own spoiler-free good, I don’t recommend hitting the internet to delve deeper into Adelstein’s history (not even on the Wiki). Just know that if this series follows through on what is likely to come (and lord knows, Mann is big on follow through), Tokyo Vice won’t just be a good watch, it could well turn out to be historic television.