House of Bamboo (1955)

Written by CinemaSerf on November 14, 2023

When a man is mysteriously murdered in Tokyo, the US Army plants it's streetwise investigator "Eddie" (Robert Stack) into the city with a mission to inveigle himself into a gang of petty American racketeers. It's quite easy for him get their attention, but securing the trust of "Sandy" (Robert Ryan) isn't so straightforward, especially as his sidekick "Griff" (Cameron Mitchell) is both wary and jealous of this new addition to their numbers. As this gang start to become more ambitious with their criminal activities , "Eddie" finds his position becoming more and more perilous. Can he survive the double-crossing and bring his quarry to book? There were quite a few of these post-war, culture-clash crime dramas made and this isn't really especially notable. Stack and Ryan both do just about enough but the ease by which the mystery is unraveled and the rather cluttering up romance with "Mariko" (Shirley Yamaguchi) leave too much of this until the last ten minutes which is all a bit rushed. It was filmed on location, which certainly helps, but this is still all just a little too join-the-dots to be particularly memorable.