Gung Ho (1986)

Best movie of this year hands down!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is quite an entertaining comedy starring Michael Keaton as car manufacturer Hunt Stevenson, whose car company was bought out by a Japanese firm. So, he tries to rally his American workers together to work at the plant for lesser pay and being subjected to harsher work conditions and schedules by the Japanese managers.There is plenty of comedy relief in the film, from culture clashes to slapstick humor. There's also bits of heroism in the film, including Hunt's town's survival being contingent on the car company staying afloat and including Japanese company manager Oishi Kazihiro (Gedde Watanabe) showing honor to his boss, colleagues and family in getting the car making job done.Overall, an entertaining film with touches of Americana and Japanese cultures.Grade B+

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling. Honest, industrious citizens were classed as bloodsuckers if they asked to be paid a living wage, and praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed." - Kurt Vonnegut Ron Howard's "Gung Ho" stars Michael Keaton as Hunt Stevenson, a factory worker at an auto plant in Hadleyville, Pennsylvania. When the plant is purchased by Assan Motors, a Japanese company, Hunt becomes a liaison between Japanese bosses and American workers.For most of its running time, "Gung Ho" is a slick, well-shot and funny feature. Here, Japanese capitalism is shown to be dangerously obsessed with production, exploitation and servitude. In contrast, American workers and bosses are shown to be slovenly, lackadaisical and overly individualistic, traits which hamper corporate profits.By the film's end, however, Howard reveals "Gung Ho's" quite sinister message: the worker of tomorrow is better off if he adopts a mixture of Eastern and Western values. Work hard, increase production and put your job first, and mega-corporations won't fire you, abandon you and go seeking cheaper labour elsewhere. But don't work too hard; after-all, an alive worker is a good worker.That this is not only a form of social blackmail, and a false binary – the worker forced to choose between two types of the same exploitation – doesn't occur to Howard. That capitalism's many contradictions means that it must, in aggregate, lead to bankruptcy, debt, unemployment, downsizing, lowered wages and unemployment regardless of "efficiency" or "the behaviour of the worker", doesn't occur to him either. Co-starring Mimi Rogers, the film quite cleverly positions its audience to sympathise with what would otherwise be deemed racial stereotypes.7.5/10 - Worth one viewing.

Just today, holed up with a bad head cold on a wet and dreary day, I watched this old movie. Simply because I wanted to see some old Michael Keaton movies I had missed. This is mostly a comedy just for the sake of comedy, but there is a cultural message here. The Japanese find out how hard it is to have a bunch of blue-collar Pennsylvanians make cars the Japanese way, efficiency, zero defects , and all that. And the Americans find out that they can't just keep on doing "business as usual" and keep jobs in their community.Michael Keaton is auto worker Hunt Stevenson, sent by the mayor to Japan to court Assan Motors in the hopes of re-starting a car factory and re-vitalize their community. Hunt thinks he botches the assignment, but somehow the Japanese are impressed and schedule a visit to the plant site. The deal is made, the workers begin making cars. Defects and all. "We can't make these perfect, those flaws are for the dealer to fix." American Gedde Watanabe is the Japanese plant manager, Oishi Kazihiro. Anyway the movie bogs down a bit in the middle but in the end the Americans and the Japanese figure out ways to respect each others' cultures, and keep the factory going after it had to be shut down briefly.

I remember watching "Gung Ho" as a child with my mother, and wondered why she would always cry in the last few minutes. I, of course, found the entire movie hilarious, particularly the mannerisms of the characters. It wasn't until I was much older and watched it again that I realized how much deeper this show actually is.Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe shine in their roles as the reluctant mediators. Keaton ceases to amaze me with his real-life style of line delivery, and Watanabe adds humor and pathos to the mix. I also thought that Patti Yasutake (Umeki) was simply fabulous in her role as the comic relief.I think this movie is one of the most underrated films of the 80s. We can all learn a lesson from the merging of the American and Japanese workers in this film...sometimes you really *can* have "the best of both worlds." And now I understand why my mother felt the way she did in those closing moments. I'd rather have one of those cars, too.