A wonderful, practically perfect movie of culture clashes set in the auto industry.
When we learn that the small town of Hadlesville, PA is losing all its jobs, Hunt Stevenson (Michael Keaton) is sent to Japan to convince them of setting it up in America. Once they arrive, it's a really brutal image of American sloven entitlement versus over-worked painfully disciplined Japanese.
These types of movies were very popular back then. We had Tom Selleck in "Mr. Baseball," "Toxic Avenger 2" Sony had just bought Columbia pictures. SO there was this attitude that Japan was going to buy America.
"Gung Ho" is about the working class. On both sides of the Pacific (well, in this case...to the Atlantic). The town is dying. American companies were finding cheaper labor elsewhere. And the unions were forced to "take it or leave it." You see the infrastructure of the community when it starts to slide. Keaton is the go-between. He's the typical Keaton huckster. A people pleaser but finds redemption in coming clean. Nothing in his life is serious and is reflected on the people he surrounds himself with. In a typical American steel town, the buds stick together through everything. Never once did his friends assume he'd use his fast talking to ruin an entire town.
His boss is played by Gedde Watanabe. Sort of if, Long Duc Dong from "Sixteen Candles" had grown up. A man who, we first see, go through ritualistic flogging, for which we will learn later on was due to failure. Apparently in Japan failure to your company meant you apologized to your employees through screaming your failures.
There is a speech in the movie that is very appropriate for today's American society. Keaton gives an impassioned speech to rally the workers to meet a quota the Japanese do on a monthly basis. In it, he tells them how far we've lost our way. The pride of work is no longer part of them. It use to be that America just got shit done. And it's really prescient today, as factories are leaving towns. While the Americans today would rather see them leave than bend a little.
This movie was ahead of its time, and at the same time...it really got lost in timing. A great watch. I wish Ron Howard would go back to making these types of movies. Pretty amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment