Gung Ho

Gung Ho (released in Australia and New Zealand as Working Class Man) is a 1986 American comedy film directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton. The story portrayed the takeover of an American car plant by a Japanese corporation (although the title phrase is an Americanized Chinese term). Most of the movie was filmed on location in the Pittsburgh area with additional scenes shot in Tokyo and Argentina. A short-lived TV series based on the film, followed in 1987. Plot In fictional Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, the local auto plant, which supplied most of the town's jobs, has been closed for nine months. Former foreman Hunt Stevenson (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.