Gung HoMovies like Gung Ho
- Key Features:
- Cultural clash, Corporate culture, Oil industry, Factory, Japanese culture, American culture, Negotiation, Cultural assimilation, Workplace dynamics, Misunderstanding, Economic hardship, Small town, Friendship, Adaptation
- Tone:
- humorous, satirical, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Comedy fans, Working-class viewers, Culture-clash enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Frustration → Understanding
Gung Ho

When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.
Gung Ho
In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

Jack Elliot, a one-time MVP for the New York Yankees is now on the down side of his baseball career. With a falling batting average, does he have one good year left and can the manager of the Chunichi Dragons, a Japanese Central baseball league find it in him?

Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.

Aglaé, a young factory worker, has only one focus in life: her job at a car crash test site. When she learns that the factory is going to be relocated abroad, she accepts, to everyone's surprise, to go to India in order to hold on to her job. Accompanied by two colleagues, she sets out on a perilous road trip to the other side of the world.

After his entire department is outsourced, an American novelty products salesman heads to India to train his replacement.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

A group of German construction workers set out for a foreign construction site in the Bulgarian province. The strange country awakens adventure feelings among the men. At the same time, they are confronted with their prejudices and mistrust. For two of the men, a nearby village becomes the stage for a competition for the recognition and favor of the village.

In 1614 a Japanese expedition led by the emperor's grandson landed in the Sevillian town of Coria del Río, and the heir to the throne fell in love with a beautiful Sevillian, formed a family and never returned to Japan. 400 years later, Emperor Satohito dies and the rightful heir turns out to be Paco Japan, a 37-year-old neighbor of Coria del Río. The life of Paco and his family will change dramatically when he sees himself overnight living in the Imperial Palace and preparing to be the new Emperors of Japan. The cultural and linguistic clash between Japanese and Andalusian will cause funny and crazy situations in this adventure where East and West shake hands.

This day-in-the-life cult comedy focuses on a group of friends working at Sully Boyar's Car Wash in the Los Angeles ghetto. The team meets dozens of eccentric customers -- including a smooth-talking preacher, a wacky cab driver and an ex-convict -- while cracking politically incorrect jokes to a constant soundtrack of disco and funk. Some of the workers find romance as the day moves along, but most are just happy to get through another shift.

Akira Saito, a Japanese businessman lives in Tokyo with his Japanese-American wife Aiko and their children, Takeshi and Tomoya. When the family has a chance to move to the United States so that Aiko can teach the children about their American heritage, they pack up and head for Houston, Texas and run a restaurant. This is where the trouble begins....

Bored with Bollywood movies but fascinated with their Hollywood counterparts from his youth, Ram dreams to become a singer and actor in America, the country where dreams are made. He is encouraged when his American-based close friend, Vijay Rao, comes for visit, and brags about driving a Mercedes and living in a penthouse.

Years of working in the food industry have made Juana, a working-class Latina, a chef of speed and skill. Searching for financial stability, she stumbles into a high-energy, male-dominated Japanese cuisine kitchen. The new atmosphere re-ignites her passions for food and life and makes her hungry to get mixed up in the flavors of this new world.

An intimate story of the enduring bond of friendship between two hard-living men, set against a sweeping backdrop: the American West, post-World War II, in its twilight. Pete and Big Boy are masters of the prairie, but ultimately face trickier terrain: the human heart.

Uptight New York City executive, Michael Cromwell, pursues his soon-to-be ex-wife to South America and returns home with the son he never knew he had—a boy raised in a tribal village in Brazil. Armed with only his blowgun, the 13-year-old Mimi-Siku discovers that the world outside his jungle home is indeed a strange place.

A minor car accident drives two rival aluminum-siding salesmen to the ridiculous extremes of man versus man in 1963 Baltimore.

So goes to the U.S. to open a martial arts school. Around this time, many Chinese people were sold off to U.S. railroad companies, and were brutally treated by the Americans under the harsh working conditions. Thus, the American workers' hatred towards the Chinese immigrants is high. As a result, So gets into trouble with the Americans and the mob, and calls Master Wong for help.

With the rent due and his car booted, Sean has to come up with some ends...and fast. When his best buddy and roommate Dee Loc, suggests that Sean get a job busting suds down at the local car wash.

Hubert is a French policeman with very sharp methods. After being forced to take 2 months off by his boss, who doesn't share his view on working methods, he goes back to Japan, where he used to work 19 years ago, to settle the probate of his girlfriend who left him shortly after marriage without a trace.

J.C. Wiatt is a talented and ambitious New York City career woman who is married to her job and working towards partner at her firm. She has a live-in relationship with Steven, a successful investment broker who, along with J.C., agreed children aren't part of the plan. J.C.'s life takes an unexpected turn when a distant relative dies and the will appoints her the caretaker of their baby girl, Elizabeth. The baby's sudden arrival causes Steven to leave, breaking off their relationship. Juggling power lunches and powdered formula, she is soon forced off the fast track by a conniving colleague and a bigoted boss. But she won't stay down for long. She'll prove to the world that a woman can have it all and on her own terms too!

Mukhtar Yusuf Ağa’s unregistered village in eastern Anatolia has been championed through letters to government officials, and his lost son İbrahim, rescued and registered by Father Hana, is finally returning at age 30 with his American love Jessica; the question is whether Tinne can become their true homeland.

A young black woman discovers that her father was a sperm donor, and if that wasn't bad enough, he's white.

A snobbish investor and a wily street con-artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.

When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.

The mayor of Sunny Dale see a chance to get rid of the Flodder family: They send the asocial bunch for an international exchange to New York. There they get confused with a Russian delegation of medical doctors while the street worker Werner who accompanies them becomes imprisoned.

Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.

During the course of an ordinary week in Hollywood, movie producer Ben must navigate his way through shark-infested waters as he struggles to complete his latest projects. A demanding studio boss demands extensive changes to a movie starring Sean Penn, while another chief won't greenlight a project unless star Bruce Willis shaves his beard. Meanwhile, Ben tries to reconcile with his wife and maintain a relationship with his young daughter.

Set shortly after the end of World War II, a philosophical boxing drama of two fighters from opposite worlds (USA and Japan) who are pulled together for a questionable fight arranged by their unscrupulous managers and the Yakuza.

Fred Bartel is the charismatic boss of a trendy Parisian communication agency, Happy Few. After a heated tax audit, he was forced by the administration to relocate overnight his company in La Courneuve. Fred and his team meet Samy, a young suburb who will quickly propose to teach them the rules and practices to adopt in this new environment.

Rudy, an American of Hispanic descent, whose south-of-the-border looks show him no mercy during an immigration raid in a migrant worker factory. As his luck goes, he is caught with neither money nor his ID and is deported to Mexico - without speaking a word of Spanish!

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.

When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly relocated, while all Boov get busy reorganizing the planet. But when one resourceful girl, Tip, manages to avoid capture, she finds herself the accidental accomplice of a banished Boov named Oh. The two fugitives realize there’s a lot more at stake than intergalactic relations as they embark on the road trip of a lifetime.

A New Jersey construction worker goes from regular guy to aspiring spy when his long-lost high school sweetheart recruits him for an espionage mission.

Naive Stanley Windrush looks for a career in a family business. Much to his dismay, he finds work at a munitions factory where he has to start from the bottom, while both the management and the labor union use him as a tool in their fight for power.

Sibylle, a young Parisian with long teeth, intends to shine in her new job by buying a hardware store in the Basque Country to set up a supermarket. She imagines that she has "rolled" the old owner but the latter is under curatorship. Sibylle must therefore deal with Ramon, the nephew, to recover his money and sign as soon as possible. Otherwise, the ejection seat is assured. She will soon realize that the Basques do not intend to let themselves be made by a Parisian, however pretty she is.

When a New York reporter plucks crocodile hunter Mick Dundee from the Australian Outback for a visit to the Big Apple, it's a clash of cultures and a recipe for good-natured comedy as naïve Dundee negotiates the concrete jungle. He proves that his instincts are quite useful in the city and adeptly handles everything from wily muggers to high-society snoots without breaking a sweat.

An American with a Japanese upbringing, Chris Kenner is a police officer assigned to the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. Kenner is partnered with Johnny Murata, a Japanese-American who isn't in touch with his roots. Despite their differences, both men excel at martial arts, and utilize their formidable skills when they go up against Yoshida, a vicious yakuza drug dealer with ties to Kenner's past.

Sometimes, when you think you have it all, everything falls apart. That is exactly the story of Jeanne .Just when she is offered the chance to dub famous American actress Jennifer Marshall in a successful American TV Show and her salary is about to triple, Marshall decides to withdraw from the show. So Jeanne makes a crazy decision, fly to Hollywood herself and make Jennifer change her mind about leaving the series...

A new couple and their families reckon with modern love amid culture clashes, societal expectations and generational differences.

When Hong Kong Inspector Lee is summoned to Los Angeles to investigate a kidnapping, the FBI doesn't want any outside help and assigns cocky LAPD Detective James Carter to distract Lee from the case. Not content to watch the action from the sidelines, Lee and Carter form an unlikely partnership and investigate the case themselves.

A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz.

A simple Chinese immigrant wages a perilous war against one of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet.

Hard-to-crack ex-CIA man Jack Byrnes and his wife Dina head for the warmer climes of Florida to meet the parents of their son-in-law-to-be, Greg Focker. Unlike their happily matched offspring, the future in-laws find themselves in a situation of opposites that definitely do not attract.

Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.

Ted Ryker is the top salesman in the New York office of a business machine company; the corporate stock lives by quarterly sales numbers, the competition is keen, and the economy may be in a downturn. Ted's company is marking time until a new product is ready – probably in a few months. Into the mix comes a new hire, a callow Midwesterner named Jamie, who's come East with his fiancée Belisa.

When a series of martial misunderstandings spirals into an international incident, a Chinese martial arts student struggling to relate to his new Japanese wife is forced to take on seven of Japan's most powerful martial arts masters, each an expert in a different discipline, ranging from karate to samurai to ninjitsu.

Disgruntled Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, Thao Lor, a Hmong teenager who tried to steal Kowalski's prized possession: a 1972 Gran Torino.

When an uptight young man and his fiancée move into his libertine mother's house, the resulting clash of life attitudes shakes everyone up.

Taken in by the yakuza at a young age, Kenji swears allegiance to his old-school boss, pledging to adhere to the family code amid ever-changing times.

Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

A middle-aged office worker encounters aliens and is gifted with alien technology and limitless powers.

When a woman visits a Chinese doctor, she discovers her pain is due to pent-up rage, and the only cure is to fully express herself, whatever may come.

Maurice and Dave sell high-end cuts of beef, but after hitting a patch of no sales, they're facing being fired. Maurice needs money to enroll in his final semester of acupuncture school, and the recently-separated Dave needs money for his daughter's birthday gift. Their final client card—a beautiful woman—is attracted to Maurice, but a desperate call from a suicidal friend interrupts her signing the contract. Still hoping to close the sale, they offer to drive her to the friend's house—where their troubles multiply.

A young Mexican woman crosses the border in search of the American dream, only to instead find her worst nightmare lying within.

A confident young cop is shown the ropes by a veteran partner in the dangerous gang-controlled barrios of Los Angeles, where the gang culture is enforced by the colors the members wear.

Dan Foreman is a seasoned advertisement sales executive at a high-ranking publication when a corporate takeover results in him being placed under naive supervisor Carter Duryea, who is half his age. Matters are made worse when Dan's new supervisor becomes romantically involved with his daughter an 18 year-old college student Alex.

A high-strung news producer finds herself in a love triangle between a talented but self-doubting reporter and a charming new anchor, who embodies the growing trivialization of news that she is determined to fight against.

The story takes place in alternative America where the blacks are members of social elite, and whites are inhabitants of inner city ghettos. Louis Pinnock is a white worker in a chocolate factory, loving husband and father of two children. While delivering a package for black CEO Thaddeus Thomas, he is mistaken for a voyeur and, as a result, loses his job, gets beaten by black cops and his family gets evicted from their home. Desperate Pinnock takes a gun and kidnaps Thomas, demanding justice.

A group of yuppies fight over a group of office stooges for the control of a shoe factory.

Arlo accepts what seems to him to be a dream promotion to Idaho. He soon discovers, however, that moving has its own share of problems.

An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson, a computer coder who he can’t connect with.

Country bumpkin Şaban Ağa has long dreamed of winning the heart of Peri, the high-society belle he plans to marry, though she doesn’t even know he exists. Spurned when Peri agrees to wed him for his money then flees back to city life, Şaban reinvents himself as the sophisticated Dilaver Bey to exact his sweet revenge.

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.

During the 1980s, uptight Ted Boynton is a salesman working in the Barcelona office of a Chicago-based company. He receives an unexpected visit from his cousin Fred, a naval officer who has come to Spain on a public relations mission for a U.S. fleet. Not exactly friends in the past, Ted and Fred strike up relationships with women in the Spanish city and experience conflicts -- Ted with his employer, and Fred with the Barcelona community.

In New York, racist Capt. Stanley White becomes obsessed with destroying a Chinese-American drug ring run by Joey Tai, an up-and-coming young gangster as ambitious as he is ruthless. While pursuing an unauthorized investigation, White grows increasingly willing to violate police protocol, resorting to progressively violent measures -- even as his concerned wife, Connie, and his superiors beg him to consider the consequences of his actions.

Georgia farm boy Will Stockdale is about to bust with pride. He’s been drafted. Will’s ready. But is Uncle Sam ready for Will?

When a straight-laced couple that has fun with a rowdy couple on vacation in Mexico return to the States, they discover that the crazy couple they met in Mexico followed them back home and decide to play tricks on them.

After murdering his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend, a wealthy ad executive stumbles into a bar and strikes up an uneasy alliance with Joe Curran, a drunken bigot with a bloodlust who works at a local factory.

In Hamburg, Ibrahim "Ibo" Secmez, of Turkish descent, wants to direct the first German kung-fu movie. For now, he makes commercials for his uncle's kebab restaurant. Titzie, an aspiring actress and Ibo's German girlfriend, finds she's pregnant. Ibo is uncertain about fatherhood - compounded by his father's disowning him for getting a German girl pregnant - so Titzie sends him packing. He makes attempts at getting it right, but as the birth approaches, he's still not ready. In the background are three thugs in search of good tripe soup and a Capulet-Montegue feud between the kebab joint and a Greek taverna across the street. Can Ibo be the glove upon that hand?

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the 'black sheep' of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

Sportswriter Andy Farmer moves with his schoolteacher wife Elizabeth to the country in order to write a novel in relative seclusion. Of course, seclusion is the last thing the Farmers find in the small, eccentric town, where disaster awaits them at every turn.

A comedy that chronicles a chance encounter between Robert and a Chinese named Jun who wanders lost through the city of Buenos Aires in search of his uncle after being assaulted by a taxi driver and his henchmen.

A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

A man with an important business meeting finds himself having to take care of the carpool for the neighborhood school children when his wife gets sick. Stopping to get donuts for the kids, things go even more awry when he finds himself a victim of a robbery. However, the situation only gets worse as a desperate man who had been contemplating a bank robbery robs the robbers and takes the man and the kids hostage in their van as his truck is blocked by an armored car. The thing then proceeds into a comedic chase movie. The father finds his kids don't really respect him and they react better to the robber. The end result is everyone gets a lifestyle change, including the original store owner.

In 1941 America, Kay and her husband are happy enough until he enlists after Pearl Harbor. Against his wishes, she takes a job at the local aircraft plant where she meets Hazel, the singer from across the way. The two soon become firm friends and with the other girls become increasingly expert workers. As the war drags on, Kay finally dates her trumpet-playing foreman and life gets more complicated.

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

Nervous high school senior Tom Lawrence visits Port Chester University, where he gets a taste of politically correct college life when he's guided by fraternity wild man Droz and his housemates at The Pit. But Droz and his pals have rivals in nasty preppy Rand McPherson and the school's steely president. With their house threatened with expulsion, Droz and company decide to throw a raging party where the various factions will collide.

Mike discovers that being the top-ranking laugh collector at Monsters, Inc. has its benefits – in particular, earning enough money to buy a six-wheel-drive car that's loaded with gadgets. That new-car smell doesn't last long enough, however, as Sulley jump-starts an ill-fated road test that teaches Mike the true meaning of buyer's remorse.

A cranky middle-aged dad and his two best friends find themselves out of step in a changing world of millennial CEOs and powerful preschool principals.

An over the hill drag racer finds himself considering retirement and ceding the spotlight to his protégé and targeted for replacement by the oil-company executive who sponsors his team.

In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.

The owner of a factory that produces flavor extracts, Joel Reynold seems to have it all, but really doesn't. What's missing is sexual attention from his wife, Suzie. Joel hatches a convoluted plan to get Suzie to cheat on him, thereby clearing the way for Joel to have an affair with Cindy, an employee. But what Joel doesn't know is that Cindy is a sociopathic con artist, and a freak workplace accident clears the way for her to ruin Joel forever.

Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.

An American businessman with a stake in a pharmaceutical company that's about to go public finds his life is thrown into turmoil by an incident in Mexico.

A case of mistaken identity forces a Federal agent and a dental supply salesman to team up as they speed through the streets of Detroit to pull off a sting operation and solve the murder of the agent's former partner.

An ingenuous countryman Ali Nazik migrates to Istanbul and meets producer Mr. Muhsin to have his first album.

Wada, a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza, who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing.

The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.

Hoping to propose to his upper-crust girlfriend, Wade Walker crashes her family's annual reunion and lands in a face-off with her dad.

Shozo Hirono has managed to separate from the Yamamori family and create his own small family, and extend his circle of acquaintances. These new friendships include a powerful underboss of the Muraoka family, Noboru Uchimoto.

An introverted insurance executive at a car rental service is annoyed by his hyperactive, garrulous coworker, but the two end up becoming friends.

A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.

A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.

Construction worker Donald is having a hard time getting anything good to eat since his wife has decided to only cook gourmet foods. That and her constant harping causes him to snap, so he whacks her. Somewhere in the confusion he comes up with a new use for the microwave oven, and begins to eat much better. Soon he's experimenting with different recipes. And different meats.

An uptight, conservative businesswoman accompanies her boyfriend to his eccentric and outgoing family's annual Christmas celebration and finds that she's a fish out of water in their free-spirited way of life.

While pursuing his dream of having car sex, a goofy middle-aged man makes all the wrong moves and ends up enrolling in a number of crazy escapades.

Disaster strikes when the egotistical CEO of an edible cutlery company leads her long-suffering staff on a corporate team-building trip in New Mexico. Trapped underground, this mismatched and disgruntled group must pull together to survive.

