'Tokyo Vice' review: The setting is better than the story

In the late 1990s, Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort, "West Side Story") leaves his native Missouri for Japan, where he learns Japanese, then lands a job with the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. He connects a pair of gruesome crimes with one symbol — which he then connects to a loan shark shell company run by the Japanese mob, Yakuza. To pursue the story, he needs help and gets it: Hiroto Katagiri (Ken Watanabe), a top detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan police. While digging into the story, he meets another American expatriate, Samantha (Rachel Keller), who works at a "gentlemen's" club in Tokyo's red light district, Kabukicho.

HBO Max says "Vice" — most of which is in subtitles (and yes, Elgort did learn some Japanese for this role) — is "loosely based" on Adelstein's 2009 memoir, "Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan." Michael Mann ("Heat," "The Insider") directs the first episode, while Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers is showrunner. 

MY SAY As the biggest star of "Tokyo Vice," the Japanese capital gets her well-deserved close-ups during the three episodes that drop Thursday. On the small screen, she's vast yet intimate, dazzling but restrained. A few scenes take place at night in the Kabukicho district where Mann (quite possibly wistful for the glory days of "Miami Vice'') can't resist indulging a few other colors from his palette. Ablaze in neon plastic pink and electric blue, this little piece of Tokyo is in sharp contrast to the supreme (and mostly colorless) urban order seen in the other establishing shots. 

Unlike the occasional movie ("Kill Bill: Vol. 1," "Lost in Translation''), a major American TV series has rarely if ever gone to Tokyo, with money as one obvious obstacle although "Vice" almost incidentally reveals the others. Beyond language and culture, the 1999 Tokyo of this eight-parter is rigid and regimented. As an outsider, Adelstein is both a novelty and object of suspicion who is tolerated as opposed to welcomed, but when he actually starts to report becomes a threat. Everything is "transactional" — a euphemism for bribery — while actual facts can't be reported until sanctioned by official channels. Big Brother is watching, but the Big Brother of "Vice" happens to be a top newspaper editor. 

There is a fascinating workplace story here, although it's more of a series of snapshots than an actual story. With his great eye for workplace details — and by Hollywood standards, his unusual respect for the important work reporters do too — Mann is in his element in Thursday's opener. He luxuriates in the details, most notably the Shimbun, city desk which tends to reward stenography and punish actual journalism.

But after that first episode ends, and Mann hands off the show to other directors, an impression starts to build that the best "Vice'' has to offer is behind it. Elgort's Adelstein rushes around the city in search of stories and understanding, then finds a source and mentor — Watanabe's Katagiri — who also recognizes a mutual benefit to their association. The Yakuza comes into and out of focus, as other side stories — which mostly function as padding — fill out the rest of "Vice." 

The Japanese cast is excellent, especially Adelstein's newsroom boss Eimi (Rinko Kikuchi), but Elgort's Adelstein never quite comes into focus himself. There's a lot of energy in the performance but almost no substance. As a result, his Adelstein recedes while the foreground is commanded by the true star here. That's almost — just not quite — enough.

BOTTOM LINE Great setting, sporadically engaging story.