'Tokyo Vice' review: A gritty but not terribly focused crime drama

'I know it's here somewhere... the diner which opens only at midnight, run by the scar-faced man known as Master.' Photos: Handout

A noir-ish fish-out-of-water story about an American in Japan struggling to deal with the police and yakuza while getting pally with a nightclub hostess – wait, isn't that Black Rain, Ridley Scott's 1989 thriller with Michael Douglas and Ken Takakura?

Once, perhaps. Now it's Tokyo Vice, based on the true story of Jake Adelstein, an American from Missouri who became a crime reporter with a major Japanese newspaper.

No easy task, given the fact that he had to master a new language and start right at the bottom in an environment where he was simultaneously unwelcome and a curiosity.

Adelstein's 1990s experiences, which almost became a Daniel Radcliffe movie back in 2014, now form the basis of a HBO series starring Baby Driver's Ansel Elgort.

With Michael Mann's involvement and the title, I almost expected this to be a mix of journalistic probe, catchy music and butt-kicking cops doubling as clothes horses (the slang kind, not the actual clothing frame).

But no, most of the boots to derriere are administered by the gangsters here, and the fashion styling is left to both the underworld types and the club hostesses around whom a not-yet-convincing subplot is built.

'OK, so maybe this is NOT the bus I was supposed to catch to get to the office.'

Viewers will have to rely on Elgort's earnestness and ambition, made somewhat acceptable perhaps by his tousled, slightly less than immaculate appearance, to carry us over the methodical build-up of the eight-episode series' first half.

It's not until the third episode, for one thing, that Edelstein's relationship with "father figure" veteran cop Hiroto Katagiri (Ken Watanabe) – the core bond of the series – really starts to matter.

But getting there is an intriguing enough journey, peppered as it is with unforgiving editors (including Pacific Rim's Rinko Kikuchi as Eimi Maruyama, apparently a composite of Adelstein's various supervisors and colleagues), evasive detectives, knifings, self-immolation and chisel-bluntingly stonefaced gang bosses.

A number of deaths (there are no murders in Japan, our intrepid journo is told) linked to some kind of loan shark outfit catches Jake's attention, and that sets him down a twisting road through Tokyo's unseen side.

Admittedly, some stretches of the show's first half veered close to tedium, and these mainly involve its need to toss the (seemingly) obligatory romantic interest Jake's way, in the form of Rachel Keller's ambitious club hostess Samantha.

Mako soon realised that trading a Jaeger cockpit for a desk job was not the best way to avenge her family.

Far stronger are the moments when Jake bonds with his colleagues, a detective or two (Katagiri is not his first police contact) – and, most amusingly of all, with aspiring yakuza Sato (Show Kasamatsu, Love You As The World Ends) over shoes and the Backstreet Boys, of all things.

The Jake-Katagiri and Jake-Sato moments have been the strongest and most appealing aspects of the series so far.

Frankly, with just eight episodes in this debut season, I would have preferred more focus on the central character and his poking of the (murder) hornets' nest.

Barring some marvel of plot thread convergence happening real soon, the interludes with Samantha and her "crew" have been more of a dull digression up to the halfway point and are likely to stay that way.

That would be a pity for such a fresh approach to hardboiled crime investigation to come partially unglued thanks to stale formulaic dictates.

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Tokyo Vice episodes are available on HBO GO and Astro On Demand.