Tokyo Vice season 1

Any fan of the legendary director, Michael Mann, will know that he has been all too quiet until just recently. He concluded the last century with a number of great films and went into this century starting strong but the quality would arguably start to wobble before 2015's disappointing Blackhat that is largely forgotten today. Then, all of a sudden, he has a Enzo Ferrari biography in the works and recently produced, as well as directing the first pilot, a loosely factual TV series called Tokyo Vice. Was this the start of something great or was the idea of being involved with a title that included Vice in name all too tempting? 

Ansel Elgort stars as a western reporter who has become fluent in Japanese and moves away from his trouble family to Tokyo where he becomes immersed a world that is wildly different from his hometown. His first reports are mechanically dull and his questioning attitude puts him at odds with his superiors until he happens upon a series of deaths that could open the floodgates to a much wider story involving the Yakuza. 

Sometimes shows that take a big name director for the opening episode often encounter an awkward change shift in style as the series develops but, for the most part, Tokyo Vice's first season was a highly engaging slice of western entertainment in a part of the world that rarely gets to be explored outside of Japan's own productions. Combined with a talented cast alongside Elgort, which includes the great Ken Watanbe, the eight episode season was a very engaging show that explores factual accounts of an investigating by Elgort's reporter in the late 1990s. 

However, while I was watching the show and thinking about how easy this was going to be to recommend to friends, the eighth episode concludes in such a way that makes me feel very apprehensive to say it's worth your time until I've seen the second season. The show went from taking its time to develop the story and characters until the final episode where everything felt rushed and very convenient in a way that failed to satisfy, causing it to fall down in my estimation the more I think about it.

Combined with the show starting with a scene in the future before jumping back in time but not catching up to where it began by the end, the overall experience is best described as unfulfilling. I will be watching season two when it arrives but the decisions and twists in episode eight really have dented my experience which is a shame as the rest of the show was doing so well. The damage isn't irreparable and hopefully Mann, and his team, can bring this back on course as there is a lot of potential within the material.