Tokyo Vice review — stylish neo-noir series journeys into a criminal underworld

There’s no murder in Japan. Not officially anyway. In Tokyo Vice, an HBO neo-noir airing on BBC, a rookie journalist is scolded by his editor for using the word in a piece about an evident execution. “Murder”, he’s told, is a designation only the police can give — which they don’t.

But the wannabe muckraker is not one for conventions. It’s the mid-1990s, and American twenty-something Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) has just become the first foreigner to be hired by a leading national newspaper. Many of his colleagues suspect he’s a spy, while his bosses despair at his overreaching ambition. Within weeks he begins an unsanctioned investigation into a couple of suspicious deaths tied to a loan company. Forget it Jake, he’s warned to no avail.

Written by JT Rogers and produced by Michael Mann, the series is a stylish fictionalisation of the real Adelstein’s memoirs — a text which is itself now thought to be a loose adaptation of the truth. In many ways it tells a familiar tale from another era, populated with jaded cops, ruthless gangsters and mysterious women, and a tenacious sleuth; there’s conspiracy, intrigue and a hint of doomed romance.

But by transposing the action to Tokyo the series finds a new way to serve an old hard-boiled story. In doing so, it judiciously broaches Jake’s outsiderness without overplaying the east/west culture clash. That Elgort speaks Japanese is both instrumental to the show’s fluency and a testament to the actor’s dedication.

Yet for all his effort, the cherubic Jake makes for a slightly bloodless leading man. He lacks the charisma and gravitas required to anchor such a deliberately paced, expansive narrative which moves from the newsroom to a swanky nightclub to a Yakuza turf war.

It’s the secondary roles that are more captivating — not least Ken Watanabe’s police detective Hiroto Katagiri. Like the mythological ferryman Charon, he ferries Jake into the criminal underworld. Although in Tokyo, dark deeds aren’t carried out in the shadows, but under the harsh glare of neon lights.

★★★☆☆

On BBC1 on November 22 at 9:10pm and then on BBC iPlayer; available to stream now on HBO Max in the US

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