starring Michael Keaton, Gedde Watanabe
produced and directed by Ron Howard
Hunt Stevenson (Michael Keaton) convinces the executives of Assan, a Japanese car company, to buy the existing but recently shut down car plant in his hometown of Hadleyville, PA. Everything does not go smoothly. The cultural differences keep the locals who work in the plant and the Japanese managers who run the plant from seeing eye to eye.
Hunt gets caught in the middle. He tries to make a deal to get the workers to out in extra hours but that leads to a misunderstanding (after he lies to the workers) that just makes things worse. Takahara Kazihiro (Gedde Watanabe), the manager of the plant, has a similar but not identical experience as his second in command reports back to his boss in Japan everything that is going wrong.
There are a number of familiar faces in this movie including George Wendt, Mimi Rogers, John Turturro, Sab Shimono, Rick Overton. At least two of director Ron Howard's relatives are in this movie: Rance Howard (father) and Clint Howard (brother).
I want to like this movie more than I do. It felt a little longer than necessary and the ending seemed wildly unrealistic. There were a few moments that made me laugh. I didn't need it to make such a broad statement about working conditions at factories. They play fast and loose with the numbers at one point in the movie when they first claim that they are on target to make 13,000 care but that later gets changed to 14,000 only to later get flip-flopped a couple more times between those two numbers.
I don't regret watching this movie. I don't think I had seen it before. What I want to see now is the sequel where the Japanese parent company expects the workers to keep building cars at the pace they did towards the end of this movie. It might be another comedy or it could be another sort of movie such as horror or tragedy as the workers and their families react to he burdens and expectations placed upon them and the town implodes on itself.
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