White Collar Worker Kintaro

Product Description

Kintaro, a former mob boss, has put his wild past behind him and is now an honest white collar worker at a construction company determined to stay on the straight and narrow. When a powerful corporation becomes bent on the destruction of his employer and enlists corrupt politicians and underworld muscle to aid them in bringing down the small company, Kintaro realizes his street smarts may not be enough. Soon, the local yakuza mob branch gets involved, and Kintaro is eventually forced to contact his old biker buddies to help him settle the score...

System Requirements:

Running Time 110 Min

Format: DVD MOVIE

Customer Reviews:

Wish Fulfilment Fun........2005-09-13

The live action movie "White Collar Worker Kintaro" is blatant wish-fulfilment. Kintaro is played by a handsome actor. The character has a young son (the boy's mother died in childbirth) and is admired by his superiors, who assign him to a difficult supervisor to toughen him up. He is a karate expert and, we eventually learn, was apparently in a motorcycle gang before he turned respectable. A famous pop singer, adored by all Japan, is unrequitedly in love with him. His mentor tells him, "Your boldness is the dream of all salarymen."

Juggling the demands of family and work, Kintaro must run to an award ceremony at his office after taking part in some kind of father-son games. He changes clothes on the sidewalk as he runs, calling up images of Clark Kent transforming into Superman. On the way, he stops on a dime; a gang of five punks is mugging another salaryman. Kintaro decides to be even later for the ceremony so that he can beat up the entire gang. As they flee, he puts his jacket back on with a flourish and says, blood dripping from one corner of his mouth, "Don't make light of salarymen."

The movie is very fun, though I rather doubt that Japanese businessmen settle disputes with their managers by challenging them to karate duels.

Miike fans beware.......2004-12-03

For those of you who value Takashi Miike for his insane originality (Gozu, Ichi the Killer, Audtion, Katakuris, etc...) you may want to stay away from this movie. It's certainly far from the pantheon of his more infamously bizarre films and it's easy to tell this is meant for a wider audience.

WHITE COLLAR WORKER KINTARO is reminiscent of your typical 80's inspirational feel-good fare, replete with all the humor and cheesiness you can swallow. It's punctuated at the right moments with a chedder-esque rock 'n roll soundtrack that'll make you laugh unintentionally, and all the enthusiastic acting of a B-movie.

But this isn't to say WHITE COLLAR WORKER is a bad movie, it's actually pretty amusing and shows that an 'unpredictable' filmmaker like Miike can live up to that adjective by creating a competent, by the numbers movie amidst the frenetic intensity of his questionable sanity. The premise is humorous even if the movie is filled with cliches--it involves a salary man who seems a bit like a fish out of water after retiring from his biker gang, resulting in an unorthodox way handling himself and the problems he faces. Contrast that with your stereotypical salary worker: stiff, mild, unpassionate, formal, and you have a decent set-up. Imagine a wallstreet paper-pusher challenging his boss to a brawl in a courtyard, or saving a man from being mugged by single-handedly whuping a bunch of hoodlums, and you'll get the picture. Ultimately, though, this is a movie about a passionate, compulsive do-gooder angry at the corrupt system he finds himself confronting, and maybe that's why the KINTARO franchise is so popular in Japan.

Now I'm not that familiar with the history of the KINTARO world in Japan, but it seems obvious Miike kept this movie firmly away from his trademark weirdness in staying true to the source material. You won't find him taking this anywhere near daring territory. You'll find only very minor instances of familiar Miike-isms here and there, but they're nothing to get excited about. Those fans more accustomed with the Salary Man Kintaro world might love this movie, but I wouldn't know.

Overall, a fleetingly amusing family film, but ultimately pedestrian and forgettable.

Very popular Japanese TV Series.......2004-09-15

I haven't yet seen the DVD (it's on order)...but this series is VERY popular in Japan. Japanese Dramass typically run 10-11 episodes for a season and that's it. This drama has been so popular that it spawned a 2 hour special as well as 3 more additional seasons and has a large comic-book following as well. The direct translation of this series from Japanese is:
Salaryman Kintaro. I will post an updated review when my copy arrives.

DVD:

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