Purely Joyful Movie!

It is a performances centric movie

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

When Monogram started its "Mr. Wong" series, it was obviously done in the hope of achieving a similar success as 20th Century-Fox had been enjoying for more than 15 years already with its hugely popular "Charlie Chan" movies - especially since they'd hired such a big star as Boris Karloff for the title role. Well, only that Mr. Karloff - the Chinese Detective from San Francisco who spoke with a British accent - neither looks nor talks nor behaves like a Chinese; except for the scene where he bows to his parrot for 'showing' him the murder method... And besides that, he completely lacks the gentle, lovable humor of Charlie Chan (which both Warner Oland and Sidney Toler conveyed perfectly) - a feature which is missing in the whole film in general: NOBODY seems to have ANY sense of humor. Murder is an earnest business. Here we've got at least an 'innovative' way of killing - only that, for such a famous sleuth, Mr. Wong really seems incredibly slow in his deductions; it seems almost as if the scriptwriters wanted to make the average mystery fan happy that he found the solution even before the detective did! Certainly not one of Monogram's best crime movies...

Karloff's Wong compares quite favorably to the various screen interpretations of Charlie Chan. He doesn't play a stereotypical Chinese according to Hollywood formula (and neither does Keye Luke in a later film in the series). Karloff brings a wit and a quiet air of command to the character, he is always moving steadily toward a solution to the crime at hand. He presents Wong as quite the most intelligent character in every film. The mysteries themselves are about average for the period. In most of the Wong films the clues are there for the audience if they care to look for them. Also, one must remark the important part Grant Withers plays, as the earnest, tough, but slightly dimwitted police Captain Bill Street, and the occasional appearance by Marjorie Reynolds as the sassy reporter Bobbie Logan who dates Street off-hours, only to interfere when at work. They bring a pleasing air of continuing romantic interest as well as comic relief to the series.

Throughout the 1930s, Fox Studios made a ton of very successful Charlie Chan films. It isn't surprising that this led to knock-off characters like Mr. Moto (also from Fox) and Mr. Wong (from poverty row giant, Monogram Studios). Frankly, while the Moto and Wong films are pleasant enough B-movies, they are too similar to the Chan films but lack their charm and wit. In the case of Wong and Chan the similarity was even greater as both were of Chinese descent, traveled the world and were "do-gooders" who often helped the helpless when conventional police work failed.In the early 1940s after Monogram completed six not particularly distinguished films AND Fox decided to discontinue the Chan series, an opportunity arose for Monogram to bring Sidney Toler to the studio and make their own Chan films. As a result, Wong was expendable and since four years had passed since the last film in this series, the studio heads decided they wanted no more Wongs. Besides, if they had Chan AND Wong, the resulting films would be like having two Wongs--and that's just not right.MR. WONG, DETECTIVE is the first Wong film and there's nothing particularly wong, I mean WRONG about the film. It was entertaining and had a nice mystery. However, it's also an awful lot like several other Monogram films--and is most like their next Wong film, THE MYSTERY OF MR. WONG. It's also a lot like the Chan films, MURDER OVER NEW YORK, THE JADE MASK and DOCKS OF NEW ORLEANS. In other words, many plot elements were repeated and after a while the films started to be indistinguishable from each other--something that was NOT a problem with the Fox films.Overall, it's worth seeing and is possibly the best film of the series--though this isn't saying a lot.

Boris Karloff is private detective James L Wong in this slow-moving potboiler. None of the characters outside of Karloff's are the least bit interesting, and the dialog and acting are sub-par, but the mystery is quite clever and almost worth the wait.Unlike Lugosi's Wong character in The Mysterious Mr. Wong, this fake Asian is a good guy and not demeaned in the portrayal. Still, Karloff is the wrong man for the part, and the whole production suffers. The character was made popular in a series of Collier's Magazine stories, and it's understandable why. Wong is a sort of Chinese-American Sherlock Holmes, with a calm, thoughtful manner that encourages confidence in him. This is not the aphorism-spewing Charlie Chan, but a smart detective who happens to be Asian. That doesn't make up for the dragging plot or the weak supporting characters, but it does make this a mildly interesting entry in the old-time mystery genre.