Think Fast, Mr. Moto

Mr Moto has an import and export business, but that is not his real work. He notices that his company is being used for diamond smuggling and starts following the trail. The road takes him from San Francisco's Chinatown as far as Shanghai. He meets a shipful of suspects, several lies and at least one murder. Moto tells nobody who he is. Norman Foster's film is the first in the Mr Moto series that came out of John P. Marquand's novels. Peter Lorre plays the Japanese detective; giving an Asian character to a white actor was the Hollywood habit of the period and is what the series is criticised for most today. Lorre's playing stands apart in that it does not turn the character into a caricature. The film runs under seventy minutes.