Here are my thoughts from my blog:

Talk about rolling the dice on casting: The Crimson Kimono was James Shigeta’s first film, Glenn Corbett’s first, Victoria Shaw’s third. And it paid off: The watchability of the three leads is the movie’s biggest selling point. Other factors in its favor are the visual and editing style, the then-daring focus on racial issues and inter-racial romance, the novel setting and location shooting in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, and a scene-stealing secondary role for Anna Lee.

So overall it’s a pretty strong effort, but you feel a “But” coming. Well, the biggest problems are (1) the very rushed nature of the final half-hour of an 82-minute film, into which an entire love triangle plot is squeezed, and (2) the perfunctory treatment of the central mystery / investigation, which when it is finally sort-of resolved is used awkwardly to illustrate a thematic point. (Personally, I am also tired of the convention which requires movie characters to fall in love in two minutes of screen time. Hey, have a few dates first, OK?)

The slapdash denouement did get me thinking about a larger issue, however. I’ll stay vague, but there is a final rejection (“No”) which I didn’t at all think was the last word. If we accept that narrative worlds continue beyond the time that we take leave of them, then given the characters in this movie, there is no reason to suppose that in the clear light of morning and with some more conversation, the situation can’t be “worked out”.