This movie is based on a cartoon and reads like one: its shopping list of clichés runs longer than the movie itself, backed by an impossibly cheesy soundtrack (possibly a tribute to David Hasselhoff?), and a lead who's larger than life in all aspects - looks, morals, fighting skills etc. One cannot say it fails to convince, because it never attempts to, yet neither can one say that it shines in its genre, whatever that may be (anime office drama, or Kafkaesque superhero soap opera?) Still,apart from some problems with rhythm and structure, its pleasantly entertaining. In a signature gesture, Miike had more fun making it than most people will have when they watch it.

"Salaryman" is a Japanese term for somebody who works for a company in a boring job, not really going anywhere, working just to survive. They're generally caricatured as meek individuals without much of a personality, and looked down upon (even by other Salarymen, probably :p). Salaryman Kintaro is different! The former leader of a biker gang he's tough, honourable, brave and rather good looking. He's a very popular character in Japan, with his own manga, anime, TV-series and a few movies - the first of which was the Miike directed effort under discussion.At or near the start of the film, Kintaro is transferred to a branch of the construction company where he works that's run by a curmudgeonly drunk. He attends various meetings where rival firms bid for public contracts, but they don't win any. When they are just narrowly underbid on a contract that Kintaro is *sure* they had gotten to the lowest possible price, he realises that something underhand is going on, and that officials are being bribed by a competitor. This is something he's not going to stand for! Now that might sound really dull, but it's not. Slightly dull, yes, but the characters are all likable/interesting enough to make us care about their business affairs - and we get more focus on their personal lives anyway. The film makes only minimal effort to provide the back-story for the characters, who are presumably familiar to the Japanese audience that would go to see the film already. The relationships between some of the characters is still unclear to me, in fact, as if I'd started watching a TV series on the second episode. This may explain why the film isn't highly regarded by Miike fans, who don't know the characters and aren't as moved by what happens to them in the film as a Kintaro fan might be.The other reason it's probably not held in high regard is probably because it's a very "tame" film by Miike standards. Well, by the standards of the most famous Miike films anyway - he has made quite a few films without blood, guts and sex in them, but they're not the ones that have received wide distribution. Kintaro is free of guts and sex, and the blood that's shed is on quite mild, human standards (no gushing arteries here). It's a Miike film that you could watch with your young relatives, and they might even enjoy it. It's never going to achieve the kind of cult fan-base that films like ICHI THE KILLER do, because it's not unique or different enough, and doesn't have anything that's going to raise any extreme emotions in the viewer unless they're rabid Kintaro fans... but it's an engaging story of some likable characters, and competently directed.Note: the film was released on DVD as "White-Collar Worker Kintaro" in the US.

In fact, despite a few directorial flourishes, this feels like it was something that Miike had little interest in. No matter. It's only one of seven films he directed in 1999. It's actually a pretty good piece of forgettable junk. It reminds me a lot of the kind of late 80s / early 90s movie you might find on HBO at two in the morning. Cheesy plot, cheesy dialogue, cheesy pop songs. The American movie that kept popping into my mind was Stone Cold with Brian Bosworth. The plot of WCWR has a salaryman vying to keep the business he works for afloat. The competition, unfortunately, plays dirty. Eventually Rintaro has to take the law into his own hands. I would probably categorize this as a guilty pleasure, but I did enjoy it to an extent.