Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937)

The Mysterious Mr. Moto was a good title to introduce the character, and it would have worked much better here than in the fourth film (it fooled me when starting to watch the series!)

Mr. Moto, impromptu Cupid; former record-breaking athlete; and master of disguise, prestidigitation, mixology (he can even cure a hangover,) and jujutsu may be all these things but keeps other characters and the audience on their toes as we never know what to make of the guy.

Is he a jewel smuggler?

Is he a CID agent?

Is he a lone wolf acting on his own?

Who is this man who takes Bob Hitchings Jr. (Thomas Beck) son of the owner of the freighter under his wing on their ocean trip and who also doggedly follows an international drug and jewel smuggling ring from San Francisco's Chinatown to the Orient?

The fact that the film doesn’t pin Mr. Moto down works well in his introductory movie.

Mr. Moto is also a ladies’ man who gets an attractive young female phone operator (Lotus Long) to lay her life on the line (no pun intended) for him (and gets shot!) and is also a proto-Bond, cold-blooded agent (who coolly kills in self-defense but shows no remorse whatsoever in murdering a fellow human being.)

WOW!

The apparent failings of the fourth film do not yet appear here, (though I already feel that when viewed in their proper order it would have worked much better for me.)

The rich kid is precisely the character required for Mr. Moto to play against (the two characters find they share a common bond, making their mutual trust believable,) and there is a genuine sense of danger as not only are bad guys killed, but good guys are also unexpectedly shot, making this chapter seem more like the upcoming Noirs than the safer, semi-comedic, crime-based Charlie Chan franchise.

The Shanghai International Club with a White Russian performer (Virginia Field) and its international clientele might be the inspiration for the ridiculously overproduced, pre-WWII nightclub sequence in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984, can anyone think of a more direct source?)

This one is a more modest, more realistic affair; and because it is contemporary film making it never rings false like the over-glamorized Steven Spielberg version of one.

A fun, exciting and unpredictable introduction to the character.