Tokyo Vice is hardly the first western story to tackle the Yakuza, but it does boast a fantastic first episode directed by executive producer Michael Mann, who directed classics such as Heat and Collateral. Adapted from a memoir of Jake Adelstein, who covered the Yakuza in Japan for two decades, it has all the potential to become a new HBO staple for years to come, but it doesn’t quite pull off everything it attempts to do.
‘Gaijin’ crime reporter Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) has a tough time adjusting to his new job at Tokyo’s largest newspaper, where he has to write down police reports word for word and never use the word ‘murder’. Soon, he meets honest detective Katagiri (Ken Watanabe) and strikes up a friendship with Yakuza man Sato (Shô Kasamatsu) and bar hostess Samantha (Rachel Keller). As he investigates a series of suicides, he runs into Yakuza higher-ups and gets deeper and deeper into dangerous territory.
The big hook of Tokyo Vice, other than the phenomenally-directed first episode, is that the Japanese criminal underworld is quite different from what we see in American crime dramas.
There is an unspoken agreement between the Yakuza and the police, where the former takes care of petty crime and the latter keeps the peace. This is a world based on delicate promises, and when someone steps out of turn, they are often disciplined in the harshest way possible.
The biggest strike against Tokyo Vice is probably its lead, Ansel Elgort. Fresh off the success of Spielberg’s West Side Story, Elgort has also been battling allegations of sexual harassment. Even without the controversy, Elgort’s portrayal may rub a lot of people the wrong way. This is a character who is often impulsive and arrogant in a way you would expect an American interacting with a foreign culture to be. At times, Elgort portrays that well, but other times he mostly exudes blandness. Although the story is centered around him, several other characters are much more interesting, such as Sato and Rinko Kikuchi’s newspaper editor Emi.
Sato’s character is much more constrained by his circumstances than Jake is, and even as he rises up the ranks and strikes up a relationship with another major character, we get the feeling that almost everyone in his life sees him either as a tool or as a disgrace. As for Emi, not only is she constantly aware of her position as a woman in a fiercely patriarchal society, but she is also hiding her Korean roots, so that her peers and superiors don’t have even more ammunition to belittle and discriminate against her.
In fact, while it might seem that Tokyo Vice shows Japan largely through the westernized viewpoint of its caucasian characters, it does portray the inner lives of three-dimensional Japanese characters, like Katagiri, Emi, and Sato. Also, it subverts the white savior trope: Jake and Samantha do try to impose their individualistic wills upon the city and its people at different points, but they are rebuffed and humbled in different ways.
The show has a very slow burn, and the season suffers because the finale doesn’t do a good job of wrapping up the several plot threads set up throughout the season.
Hopefully, there’s a second season coming sooner than later. Tokyo Vice is already one of the best new shows this year. If it corrects its missteps and improves upon its strengths, it might become even better.
