The film stars Peter Lorre as the title character (at the time, it was customary for Westerners to portray Asians on the screen), Virginia Field, Thomas Beck and Sig Ruman.

[2] The film opens with Mr. Moto in disguise as a street salesmen and selling goods to passers-by.

However, Moto sees a body stuffed into a wicker basket in the store, and using his mastery of judo takes down the shopkeeper.

Before leaving, Hitchings Sr. gives his son a confidential letter for the head of the Shanghai branch of the company.

Moto finds a steward looking for Hitchings’ letter and confronts him, knowing he was the person who killed the man in the wicker basket, as he wears the tattoo.

At Shanghai, Hitchings meets with Joseph B. Wilkie and gives him the letter, but later learns that it is a blank sheet of paper.

Police storm the building, and Moto tells them the Wilkie headed the smuggling operation.

Twentieth Century Fox had three film series at the time – Charlie Chan, the Jones Family, and the Jeeves movies – and thought Mr Moto would make an ideal hero of a film series along the lines of Charlie Chan.

[7] In July 1936 Fox announced that they had bought the film rights to Think Fast, Mr Moto and Kenneth MacGowan would produce.

In January 1937 Fox announced that Peter Lorre would play Moto and that Think Fast would co-star Virginia Field.

Lorre had just signed with Fox and made two films, Crack-Up and Nancy Steele Is Missing!

The New York Times called it a "horse anchor on that pony plodder of pictures" but thought Lorre was well cast.