It is a performances centric movie

Good concept, poorly executed.

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

To understand why the Mr. Wong series exists, you have to remember that the Charlie Chan series predated this one. Both are detective series but the Chan series had to change when Warner Oland died and Sidney Toler took over. Monogram studios which was always a small studio in Hollywood was the production studio for both Chan and now Mr. Wong. The best thing about this series was the casting of Boris Karloff as Wong and it is eerie how close to Chan he appears in the films.This one and some of the others the cast includes Marjorie Reynolds, a pretty fair actress as the woman reporter. The real treat here is the casting of Jason Robards Sr. Now mostly forgotten, it was his son, Jason Robards Jr. that became more famous, but this was his dad. Both father and son are gone now, but they did provide a lot of entertainment. Robards Sr. was in a Warner Oland Chan film, and actually had more picture roles than Jr. but the majority of them were up much earlier than his son. Robards Jr. has another son Robards The third, who is more active behind the camera than in front of it.This film pretty much fits Mr. Wong into a mystery he solves very much in the style of Charlie Chan. One thing that is a shame is the last film of the Wong series replaced Karloff with Keye Luke who is Chan's son in that series. That one was a historic first as Luke was the only Wong who was ethnically right for the series. This did not go over and the Wong series was canceled after that film.This film benefits from all the prior work Monogram had with this type of film, and the presence of Boris and other experienced hands.

Neither of the six films in the Mr Wong series are great but they are entertaining enough. The Fatal Hour does drag a fair bit, the photography could have done with a little more finesse and while he is much better than he is in Mr Wong in Chinatown Grant Withers overacts, shouting his lines too much. I didn't find it a bad film at all and found it an improvement over Mr Wong in Chinatown. The sets and lighting are effective enough, the music is jaunty and eerie and the dialogue has good doses of humour and thoughtfulness. The story is not as predictable as it sounds, the murders are not particularly creative but the plotting is diverting, fills the short running time very well and the twists and red herrings add to the intrigue and fun(personally I didn't find it that convoluted) though would have been more effective with a brisker pace. The Fatal Hours also is one of the better acted films in the series. Boris Karloff regardless of reservations of authenticity is very magnetic and gives a dignified and thoughtful performance. Marjorie Reynolds is very sassy with the humour coming naturally to her, she and Withers do have some good chemistry. The supporting cast is one of the stronger and more consistent ones of the series, Robert Puglia is the standout as the film's most interesting character and Craig Reynolds also injects life and humour to things. In conclusion, not great but better than expected. 7/10 Bethany Cox

And God forbid they hire an actual Chinese actor for this - or for any lead Chinese character.Boris Karloff starred in a few films as Mr. Wong, a Chinese detective who is brought in by Captain Street (Grant Withers) when an undercover police officer is murdered.There are a few more murders as Mr. Wong, having found a valuable piece of jade in the policeman's pocket, tries to crack a smuggling ring in San Francisco.The acting is good, even though the characters are stock: the irascible police captain and the ambitious, omnipresent reporter (Marjorie Reynolds). Boris Karloff does a very good job, but he does not come off as Chinese. In a documentary about Chinese actors, one actress said that Luise Rainer in the Good Earth was perfection playing a Chinese character. I doubt they'd say that about Boris Karloff. I'm sure he had no time to prepare.I found this film hard to get into for some reason. It just didn't hold my attention. The plot is actually quite good and there are plenty of suspects. It's worth a look.

Although not as legendary or eloquent as his contemporary British colleague Sherlock Holmes, Oriental detective Mr. Wong successfully solved quite a lot of difficult cases as well, with his splendid observation talents and marvelous deduction skills. "The Fatal Hour" is the fourth film in a series of six, all but one starring the unequaled master-actor Boris Karloff in the role James Lee Wong. Police Captain Bill Street always calls him upon for help whenever there's a complex murder case with connections to the oriental community of San Francisco. In "The Fatal Hour", Street's colleague and long time friend Dan O'Grady has been murdered during his investigation of an extended oriental jewelry smuggling network. The owner of the dubious Neptune bar near the harbor – where all the smuggling import and export takes place - is the obvious suspect, but there are a lot more people involved. This isn't a very sensational film in terms of violent bloodshed or wild car chases, but the plot is quite compelling and the dialogues are fluently written. There are a couple of ingenious red herrings and I liked the realistic aspect that Wong isn't a superhero who prevents further murders from happening and thus has to face several more dead bodies during his investigation. Even though pretty much performing on automatic pilot, Karloff is terrific and he receives good feedback from the supportive cast. Particularly Marjorie Reynolds is likable as the obtrusive yet helpful gossip reporter Bobby Logan. Recommended in case you have 70 minutes to spare.