• Adventurous
• Intense

‘Tokyo Vice’

Michael Mann has never been what you’d call a prolific filmmaker, but the last decade has seen a considerable — and unfortunate — slowdown in his output. His 2011 HBO series about degenerate gamblers and seedy racetracks, Luck, got axed when multiple horses died during the course of filming, and his big budget 2015 hacker opus Blackhat was marred by a botched release strategy by a disinterested studio (it has since seen a mini-renaissance, critically speaking). After serving a few years in director’s jail, he subsequently turned his attention to Tokyo Vice, an adaptation of journalist Jake Adelstein’s memoir, in October of 2019, only to see the world shut down a few months later due to the pandemic. Well, patience is a virtue, and Mann’s fans (#MannFanns?) have certainly been patient, but now their long wait is over. The first three episodes of Tokyo Vice are available to stream and, finally, all is right with the world once again.