Verdict
Summary
An inspiring slice of life comedy / drama from director Ron Howard and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell, who’d previously collaborated with Howard on Splash and then later on Parenthood, Gung Ho is a rock solid and fairly original sleeper gem from the mid-’80s with great performances, especially from the two leads.
Plot:
A small American town gets a huge boost when their auto plant is reinvigorated by a Japanese company, but it’s on a probationary basis.
Review:
A dying American town sends their best guy – Hunt Stevenson (Michael Keaton just becoming a star) – to Japan to try to woo a Japanese company to purchase their recently shut down automobile factory in the hopes that it would be a lifeline for all the families who live in the town. The town’s gambit works: Hunt is shocked when Assan Motor Company sends a core Japanese team to whip the factory into shape for business again, but it’s on a probationary basis, and Hunt is given an executive position to be the liaison between the Japanese company and the American working class Joes who are given one final chance to make the factory profitable. Assan Motors sends a “shamed” businessman named Oishi (Gedde Watanabe from Sixteen Candles and Vamp) to be in charge, but he’s completely undermined by his team and the lackluster performance of the lazy and entitled American workers. When their quarterly production numbers are close to catastrophic, Oishi makes a deal with Hunt: The factory will close in one month if the Americans cannot produce 15,000 cars within 30 days, which is a huge feat that the Americans simply can’t meet due to their compromising and lazy work ethic, and the entire town’s future is on the line if Hunt can’t motivate his workers to meet their quota, which, if met, will net the workers a big pay raise.
An inspiring slice of life comedy / drama from director Ron Howard and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell, who’d previously collaborated with Howard on Splash and then later on Parenthood, Gung Ho is a rock solid and fairly original sleeper gem from the mid-’80s (I saw it in a theater when it came out) with great performances, especially from the two leads. Keaton showed here how likable of a leading man he could be, just an everyman sort of guy we love to root for, and Watanabe is also very relatable as a struggling guy just trying to prove to his superiors that he “can do it.” With winning songs on the soundtrack and a good score by Thomas Newman, this one is a keeper.
Kino Lorber has just released a Blu-ray of Gung Ho, and it looks great in a brand new HD master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative with sharp image and vibrant sound. It’s never looked better on home video than it does here, and the disc comes with a new audio commentary by a film historian, plus a couple of interviews: One with Watanabe and another with co-star George Wendt, who recently passed away. There’s also a slipcover.