EFFICIENCY EXPERT, THE (Spotswood) (director: Mark Joffe; screenwriters: Max Dann/Andrew Knight; cinematographer: Ellery Ryan; editor: Nicholas Beauman; cast: Anthony Hopkins (Wallace), Ben Mendelsohn (Carey), Toni Collette (Wendy), Bruno Lawrence (Robert), Alwyn Kurts (Mr. Ball), Rebecca Rigg (Cheryl), Angela Punch-McGregor (Caroline), John Walton (JerryFinn), Russell Crowe (Kim); Runtime: 95; 1991-Australia)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This is a minor comedy, in the style of Ealing films from the 1950s, set in the 1960s in a suburban Australian town called Spotswood. It is about a cold, calculating efficiency expert, Errol Wallace (Hopkins), who has a change of heart after evaluating an old-fashioned, family-owned moccasin factory, and he comes to realize that not everything could be measured by the bottom line. The film makes a point to show how Hopkin's personal life is drab and his marriage is coming apart, yet he tells others how to manage their lives. This film has a gentle way of showing the war between the bureaucrats of big business and the little man caught in the squeeze of downsizing for greater company profits. Anthony Hopkins offers a restraint performance that borders on brilliance, showing that he really cares that he had to fire workers in the face of business competition and foreign pressure. How effective the film was, depended on how much you thought Hopkin's change mattered. I only felt I was seeing a Frank Capra type of social-issue picture, that only goes surface deep, accenting how wonderful and eccentric the little guy is and how cold-hearted are the corporation types, resulting in too many generalizations of each type.
The small shoe company has been in business for a long time, but it expects to run out of money in about 18 months. The owner is Mr. Ball (Alwyn Kurts), one of those old-timers who really cares about the people who work for him and forms a paternalistic relationship with his loyal employees. But the place has not kept up with the modern times and is in need of a shot in the arm. Wallace says it reminds him of a visit to his grandfather's house.
Wallace gets his stopwatch out, gets a look at the poorly kept books, and laissez-faire worker's attitude, and takes the foreman's teenage son, Carey (Ben Mendelsohn), and has him record the worker's efficiency on the job. Carey only helps Wallace do this because the boss' attractive daughter, Cheryl (Rigg), will be working with him in the office and he wants to get close to her so that he can ask her out. But a young cocky upstart in the sales department, Kim (Crowe), who has a different attitude than the others who work there, thinking only of himself, gets to Cheryl first. The film will keep track of how the likable but goofy Carey does in the romance department. Since it is obvious that he is not Cheryl's type, and is too immature to realize how lucky he is to have a kindhearted girl who works in the dispatch department, Wendy (Toni Collette), show a love interest in him. He will futilely chase after Cheryl for most of the film.
Meanwhile, on Wallace's last efficiency assignment at a big auto plant, he recommended huge layoffs, which has sparked union unrest and he finds himself in the midst of settling that crisis while continuing to examine this much friendlier plant, but fully realizing that he will have to recommend firing most of the workers here also, including Carey's father (Bruno Lawrence).
Wallace tries to be distant to the workers, but in their naiveness of what his real job is, thinking he is there to modernize the plant, the workers go out of their way to be friendly to him. The culmination of this comraderie, is when they invite him to join their team in slot car races for the state championship. So when it comes time to announce that the firm is firing them, he comes up with a new solution, making them partners in the plant and having the plant expand into manufacturing gloves and seat covers to take the place of the slow sales in moccasins, thereby saving their jobs. This happy ending seemed artificial...too much pablum to confront the real problems still facing the workers in an economy driven by stock market expectations.
REVIEWED ON 8/8/2000 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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