Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
filippaberry84
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Ginger
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
robert-temple-1
This is the first of the series of Mr. Wong films based upon the series of stories entitled 'James Lee Wong' written by Hugh Wiley (1884-1968), which appeared in Colliers Magazine. Colliers was a very prominent illustrated national magazine in America which paid good money for popular fiction. It did not pay as much as the Saturday Evening Post, which contained higher quality fiction and provided F. Scott Fitzgerald with most of his income, but it was lucrative. It was not uncommon for Colliers pulp fiction to be sold on to Hollywood to provide the stories for B films. Six of these Mr. Wong stories were filmed between 1938 and 1940. The first five of these starred Boris Karloff as the Chinese detective Mr. James Lee Wong, who lives in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the sixth and final one (PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN, 1940) starred the much younger Keye Luke as Mr. Wong. However, before this series began, Bela Lugosi had starred in a film entitled THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934) which was directed by William Nigh, the same man who later directed the entire Karloff series. (He did not direct the final film in the series starring Keye Luke in 1940.) But the Lugosi film had no connection whatever with the Karloff series, since the Mr. Wong in that story is not a detective but an evil schemer who wishes to achieve world domination by collecting 'the twelve coins of Confucius'. (That was based on a short story by someone else about Confucius giving twelve coins to twelve disciples just before his death and predicting that when they all came back into one ownership again in the future, the possessor of all 12 coins would be a powerful ruler.) Earlier still, Edward G. Robinson had played another Mr. Wong in THE HONOURABLE MR. WONG (1932), based upon a play written by David Belasco and Achmed Abdullah, which was the pen name of Alexander Romanoff, son of the Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff of Russia. The Chinese surname Wong is spelled Wang in Mandarin but Wong in Cantonese. It means 'King'. It is one of the commonest surnames in China, hence it is not surprising that various Wongs have appeared in Hollywood films, as there are tens of millions of people called Mr. Wong or Mr. Wang in China itself. This first Karloff film has an ingenious plot. People are murdered by poison glass contained in thin glass spheres, but no one can figure out how the spheres are broken. The first murder takes place between the time of the arrival of the police outside a chemical factory and the entrance of the police into the murdered man's office, a very brief space of time. How did he die in that short period? Mr. Wong finally figures it out, but I shall not reveal the ingenious secret. Karloff plays Wong in a very genteel way as a kind of English gentleman who just happens to be Chinese. In fact, in the story it is mentioned that he has even studied at Oxford. Karloff utters assorted Confucian-style proverbs from time to time, such as: 'A request from a friend is virtually a command.' It is all very mannered and stylized. The film is ruined by the oafish performance of one of the worst actors in the history of the cinema, Grant Withers, as Sam the police detective. He is so ludicrous and offensive, and shouts so much and is so rude to everyone including his fiancée, that the film's impact is gutted by it and made to appear wholly ridiculous. That is a pity, because the film otherwise had an eerie B picture air of mystery about it which Karloff's quiet detective greatly enhanced. What the Chinese would think of these films today can easily be imagined, since Karloff, especially in profile, is very much what the Chinese call 'a big nose', and could only elicit a laugh (especially as there are no Confucian gentlemen left today anyway). Certainly there was a great improvement in Hollywood when the highly engaging young Keye Luke was allowed to play Chinese characters, as he was genuinely Chinese, however Americanized he may have been in his manners and speech. But Hollywood always fell back on Hollywood stars to play Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Turks, American Indians, Greek peasants (Anthony Quinn as Zorba), and all manner of Europeans, without even a blush. The tradition of Westerners pretending to be Orientals continued with a British actor portraying Mahatma Gandhi in GANDHI (1982). But one must presumably not look for authenticity in a world of mass illusion.
Athanatos
The basic gimmick to this movie is clever. Mr Wong, on the other hand, either isn't clever or is a sort of passive-aggressive fiend, who delights in murder.Before the second murder has occurred, Wong has the gist of how the first murder was effected. And, as the second murder is about to be committed, Mr Wong is positioned to know what the triggering mechanism is. So I'm shouting "Kick the door! Kick the door! Kick the door!" But Wong is just standing there. Perhaps he's not figured it out.After the second murder, Wong is positioned to know exactly what the trigger is. But Wong allows a third murder to happen.Well, I submit that Mr Wong does know; that, as the third murder is committed, the buzzard is sitting next to Street, giggling inside, as Street unwittingly kills the third fellow.Wong doesn't bother to expose the murderer until the murderer has little cause to kill again. Unfortunately for the killer, Wong figures that he can get one more death out of the situation, by sending the killer to the gallows.Wait! Why was Street sending people to the gallows in 1938? California switched to gas for people convicted after 27 August 1937. (Lethal injection was introduced in the '90s.)
sergio choren
In the great tradition of Chinese detectives as Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto, Boris Karloff's Mr. Wong was a solid addition to that venerable kind of films. Is really difficult to think in Karloff as a Chinese person, but the British actor delivers a solid performance, if you can dig his weird accent. The plot is simple, the strange murders are against logic, but Mr. Wong's patience and intelligence can solve the mystery. The other actors are far below Karloff, but the overall fell of the movie is candid and likable. Another completely different Mr. Wong was played before by Bela Lugosi, a villain, but this detective deserves your interest if you are a fan of the genre.
Snow Leopard
Although most of the production is pretty plain, the basic mystery story in "Mr. Wong, Detective" is rather interesting, and Boris Karloff's good performance as the detective also makes it worth seeing. Karloff brought a human touch to every role that he played, and even though this is an atypical part for him, he is a believable Mr. Wong. Most of the other characters are somewhat nondescript, except for Grant Withers's abrasive police officer, and aside from Karloff the cast is nothing special, but the story itself is enough to hold your interest.In the story, the detective must patiently solve a mystery from the slightest of clues. Some of the developments strain credibility, but if you can accept the premise, it's an interesting idea and it makes decent use of the details. There are several places where it could have been written better or edited more effectively, but the pacing is pretty good, and as it proceeds, it often gives you what you need to know in order to try to anticipate what happens next.The climactic sequence is one of the better ones that you'll see in this kind of B-movie. The production values are lower than a Karloff feature deserves, but with a solid story and Karloff in the lead, it's definitely worth seeing.
