Writer-director Samuel Fuller (“The Big Red One,” “Pickup on South Street”) ticks off a lot of the “Sam Fuller Film” boxes in his 1959 noir drama, “The Crimson Kimono.”

It’s sordid and a tad seamy, set on the mean streets of late ’50s LA — with bums, alcoholics, strip clubs and a lurid murder of a stripper fleeing down the neon-lit strip.

The script touches on combat, with its cop-partners bonded for life in WWII, recalled to duty (it is implied) in Korea.

But Fuller’s fascination with Asia (“China Gate,” the first “Vietnam Movie,” and “House of Bamboo”) is the most fascinating thread to unravel in this atmospheric drama that occasionally loses track of the murder it’s supposed to be investigating.

The newspaper journalist turned filmmaker introduces us to a culture within a culture — Japanese American life, still segregated after WWII, more trusting than you’d think after the population was rounded up in internment camps due to questions about the emigre, second and third generation population’s loyalty.

And as our tour guide to this world, of “Nisei Festivals” and “kendo” demonstrations, he uses Det. Joe Kojaku, played by the dashing Japanese American actor James Shigeta.

Handsome, with a melodious bass voice, the Hawaian-born Shigeta worked through decades of America and Hollywood trying to decide whether to let go of old prejudices, or cling to them a while longer.

That’s exactly what “The Crimson Kimono” is about.

“Crimson Kimono” was Shigeta’s screen debut. And if you watched movies and TV from the ’60s through 80s, he was everywhere. You couldn’t make “Midway” without him playing an admiral. He played villains and victims, yakuza and prosecutors, and “inscrutable” Asian mentors of whatever Asian culture was being depicted.

Yes, he was on “Kung-Fu.”

He was the kidnapped CEO in the Japan Ascendant subplot of “Die Hard,” the voice of “Mulan’s” father in the Disney animated classic, and appeared on every TV series set in Hawaii for decades.

But in this film and other early outings — “Bridge to the Sun” and “Flower Drum Song” — he was allowed to be what he was born to play — a romantic lead.

“Crimson Kimono” begins with the murder of a popular stripper, Sugar Torch (Gloria Pall). Her murderer was waiting in her dressing room, and when the shots there missed, the shooter chased her down the street in her onstage lingerie, gunning her down in front of witnesses.

But nobody got a good look at the killer. Det. Kojaku and his former Nisei Battalion CO Det. Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) have their work cut out for them.

The police procedural Fuller serves up here is terrific — following leads based on the paintings and wig Sugar Torch had in her dressing room. She was ready to make the jump to Vegas in a geisha striptease, “The Crimson Kimono.”

The cops — “We don’t like being called cops, like girls don’t like being called ‘broads!'” — have to question artists, including the flirtatious alcoholic art-world insider Mac (Anna Lee).

“Love does much, bur bourbon does EVERYthing!”

They’ll visit businesses, a cemetary and a Buddhist temple, looking for Japanese Americans with some idea who the killer’s accomplice might be, and they’ll track an insanely brawny and uncooperative Korean immigrant (Fuji) who tosses Shigeta’s Kojaku around like a rag doll.

Only the artist Chris (Victoria Shaw) got a decent look at their quarry, and her sketch — broadcast on TV — puts her in danger. Her college girl looks get the attention first Charlie, then Joe.

An inter-racial romance? Betrayal of a foxhole buddy? They may have to settle this in a kendo fight.

Fuller parks our cops in a swank hotel apartment — roomies who get room service — with a piano, a city view, the works. There’s almost no explaining this “Miami Vice” lifestyle on a detective’s salary — even two of them. But it makes a convenient place to hide Chris from our still-at-large murderer.

The plot, when things get back to “the case,” unfolds in the most corny, conventional ways possible. A nice twist is undone by a breathless confession recited like a film noir soliloquy.

But the setting, the cultural exploration and the race-consciousness of it all — Japan can give any nation on Earth a run for the title “most racist” — give “The Crimson Kimono” just enough edge to be worth your trouble.

Fuller soft-sells the nasty “miscegenation” angle, which considering the Civil Rights era this film sprang from, seems like a cop-out.

But Shigeta is so good in the lead that his later career becomes one of Hollywood’s greatest “it might have beens.” He shared the 1960 “Most Promising Newcomer” Golden Globe for this film. If he’d ever had that break-out hit, there’s no telling how far this American Mifune might have risen.

Rating: TV-PG, violence, striptease sequences

Cast: James Shigeta, Victoria Shaw,
Anna Lee, Glenn Corbett, Neyle Morrow, Walter Burke and Fuji

Credits: Scripted and directed by Samuel Fuller. A Columbia Pictures release on Tubi.

Running time: 1:22