I found "Mr. Wong" extremely hard to follow. The director obviously had no idea of the meaning of the words, "continuity" and "transition." The story has several parallel threads, and Branch jumps from one to the other without warning or explanation.
Many of the scenes are of people silently doing rather unrecognizable things in unlighted rooms. I found myself constantly asking, "Who is this person? What are they doing? And why are they doing it?" Unfortunately, satisfactory answers were rarely forthcoming.
I found myself hitting the rewind button quite a lot, and still not really understanding why a particular scene was being enacted or exactly why I should care. The style is documentary, and the dialog attempts to be realistic, so much so that there are no clues in it as to why the characters are in a particular setting, how they got there, or where they are going. Some narration or interspersed titles would have helped this movie a lot.
Karloff is his usual low-key, lovable self, and the last ten minutes of the film are gripping and well done, so it wasn't a total waste of time. But if this was Monogram Pictures's answer to Charlie Chan, I have to ask, "what was the question, again?"
Many of the scenes are of people silently doing rather unrecognizable things in unlighted rooms. I found myself constantly asking, "Who is this person? What are they doing? And why are they doing it?" Unfortunately, satisfactory answers were rarely forthcoming.
I found myself hitting the rewind button quite a lot, and still not really understanding why a particular scene was being enacted or exactly why I should care. The style is documentary, and the dialog attempts to be realistic, so much so that there are no clues in it as to why the characters are in a particular setting, how they got there, or where they are going. Some narration or interspersed titles would have helped this movie a lot.
Karloff is his usual low-key, lovable self, and the last ten minutes of the film are gripping and well done, so it wasn't a total waste of time. But if this was Monogram Pictures's answer to Charlie Chan, I have to ask, "what was the question, again?"