I saw this movie again as an assignment for my management class. Were to mainly comment on the different management styles and ideas on quality(of the product). I did rent this one back in the eighties and I remember it to be good(but not great)movie. I've always liked Michael Keaton's style and delivery. He was a perfect fit for the movie.
I am surprised to see some of the low ratings for this movie. I grant you yes it's no Oscar winner but it does have decent comedic value. It's more of a subtle comedy rather than a all-out comedy farce. I also find some of those that felt this was an inaccurate film on cultural and business differences. I beg to differ. I grant you again that there are a lot of generalities and dramatizations but then again this is Hollywood film not a documentary. From what I've read about differences between Automakers on both sides of the Pacific at that time many of the principle ideas were accurate for the time.
Some of the basic differences were that Japanese workers made to feel as part of the company as a whole. Teamwork was emphasized. They perhaps made the company above all else. Where American workers had more of a management verses labor type of relationship. The individual was more important than the company. I'll probably get some hate email over that comment I'm sure.
Another difference was how quality was viewed and whose responsibility it was to fix. In many Japanese plants defects or problems are examined and fixed at the time it is discovered. Rather as one character in the movie put it "it was the dealers(meaning car dealer) problem".
Many of these things are probably dated but I'm sure some are still around as many US car makers are still struggling to keep up with the Japanese. If one is more interested in the subject of American, European and Japanese automakers I can recommend a book that studies this subject in more detail and was done around the same time period. The book is called "The machine that changed the world" by James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos. It's about a study of automakers during and before the time period that this movie covers. Parts are bit dry but I think you'll find that it backs up much the movie also.

Carl Panzram lived an amazing life and scribbled down his memoirs on scraps of paper for possibly the only person who ever did anything selfless for him. The book "Panzram: A Journal of Murder" by Thomas E. Gaddis and James O. Long, which came out the better part of a century after Panzram's death, gives the historical context to a first-generation American's account of running away from home to go west and be a cowboy, getting caught, thrown in the boy's home, getting away repeatedly and thrown into prison over and over all the time getting tortured and sodomized. As Panzram grew huge and strong, he sought to take revenge for the wrong done to him as he traveled to South America, Europe and Africa, and it didn't matter what people he raped, robbed, or murdered because we are all equally worthless.
This film casts skinny James Woods as the rough neck, mean-ass, son of a bitch Carl Panzram who in the film is a "drunk", overly-dramatic and emotional, and who never mentions the joy of sodomizing men and boys. The film neither elaborates on anything else particularly of note about this world traveler and career prisoner (like robbing former President Taft or being released from the Oregon prison as long as he gave his word to return). In short, I don't think Carl would be too happy.