Gung Ho (film)
| Gung Ho | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Ron Howard |
| Produced by | Deborah Blum Tony Ganz |
| Screenplay by |
Lowell Ganz Babaloo Mandel |
| Story by |
Edwin Blum Lowell Ganz Babaloo Mandel |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Thomas Newman |
| Cinematography | Donald Peterman |
| Edited by |
Daniel P. Hanley Mike Hill |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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112 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Japanese |
| Budget | $18 million |
| Box office | $36,611,610 |
Gung Ho is a 1986 American comedy film directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe. The story portrayed the takeover of an American car plant by a Japanese corporation (although the title is an Americanized Chinese expression, for "work" and "together").
The film was rated PG-13 in the US and certified 15 in the UK. Most of the movie was filmed on location in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area with additional scenes shot in Tokyo and Argentina.
The local auto plant in fictional Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, which supplied most of the town's jobs, has been closed for nine months. The former foreman Hunt Stevenson (Michael Keaton) goes to Tokyo to try to convince the Assan Motors Corporation to reopen the plant. The Japanese company agrees and, upon their arrival in the U.S., they take advantage of the desperate work force to institute many changes. The workers are not permitted a union, are paid lower wages, are moved around within the factory so that each worker learns every job, and are held to seemingly impossible standards of efficiency and quality. Adding to the strain in the relationship, the Americans find humor in the demand that they do calisthenics as a group each morning and that the Japanese executives eat their lunches with chopsticks and bathe together in the river near the factory. The workers also display a poor work ethic and lackadaisical attitude toward quality control.
The Japanese executive in charge of the plant is Takahara Kazuhiro (Gedde Watanabe), who has been a failure in his career thus far because he is too lenient on his workers. When Hunt first meets Kazuhiro in Japan, Kazuhiro is being ridiculed by his peers and being required to wear ribbons of shame. He has been given one final chance to redeem himself by making the American plant a success. Intent on becoming the strict manager his superiors expect, he gives Hunt a large promotion on the condition that he work as a liaison between the Japanese management and the American workers, to smooth the transition and convince the workers to obey the new rules. More concerned with keeping his promotion than with the welfare of his fellow workers, Hunt does everything he can to trick the American workers into compliance, but the culture clash becomes too great and he begins to lose control of the men.
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