maxnewyen Okay, so, IMDb is my go-to when considering a movie to watch. And while I'll ignore a low scoring movie on the basis of having a number of my actual friends telling me a movie is worth watching, more often then not, when if find a film my friends cannot comment on, I draw the IMDb rating line at 6.4.And then here comes Swing Shift... My fiancé and I have been home watching Goldie Shawn and Kurt Russell movies tonight. She recommended Overboard (imdb'ed at 6.8) we watched first and sure enough, very enjoyable. So I was up next to pick. In researching I stumbled across Swing Shift. Ill admit that seeing this film rated at 5.9/10 I was hesitant. However I had also read that this is the film where Goldie and Kurt fell in love, that being the case, against my better judgement, I put the 5.9 rating aside and we watched it anyway. This movie was great! I gave it a 9star. It by no means deserves its 5.9 rating. I'll leave my review at that, and let you all decide on your own.

bkoganbing The story of Swing Swift was probably played out several thousand times during the World War II years. While the men went to war the women did their bit in industries to keep America's industrial machine running. No doubt they developed itches that needed scratching. One such was Goldie Hawn, the protagonist of this story.On Pearl Harbor Day Goldie was the happily married wife of Ed Harris, who's nice enough, but a bit on the thick side and a regular alpha male. Harris goes into the navy and Hawn who doesn't want to live on just his allotment checks takes a job in an aircraft factory. She goes to work with her neighbor Christine Lahti whom she and Harris never really socialized with that much, but now they become best of friends.An even better friendship develops with musician Kurt Russell who because gigs are getting fewer and farther between also takes a job in the same aircraft factory. He still blows his trumpet at some clubs in the wee small hours of the morning after the Swing Shift. He's also a quite legitimate 4-F due to a heart murmur.Try as she might Hawn is unable to resist Russell's persistence. Then when Harris gets leave and returns all the issues come to a head.Swing Shift which has a nice score of 40s era music which is my kind of music would never get a bad review from me if for that alone. But director Jonathan Demme really does well capturing the mood of the 40s when we were a people united trying to save the world from one nasty brutal tyranny. The women are shown to have a really tough time both mastering the defense jobs they were doing and taking a lot from the men still working there.As we all know until recently Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn were the happiest unmarried couple in the history of Hollywood. That comes right through in Swing Shift and that carries a great deal of the film.Christine Lahti got Swing Shift's only Oscar recognition with her nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was one sassy woman who takes nothing off no one in the human race. It's also left her sad and a bit bitter. Before Pearl Harbor she was a nightclub singer and that world has left a mark on her. But she does have the right stuff in the end.Swing Shift is a marvelous film recapturing a bygone era of a truly United States of America.

atlasmb Goldie Hawn plays Kay Walsh and Ed Harris plays her husband, Jack, who enters the service in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Left alone, she--like many women who responded to the need for stateside "manpower"--takes a job at a factory and learns of the joys of hard, meaningful work.A coworker named Lucky (Kurt Russell) tries to get Kay to go out with him. After many months, she succumbs to his attentions and they embark on an affair.The film focuses on Kay and Lucky, but it is really about the social upheaval that occurred during WWII. By necessity, great strides were made in blurring the lines between the standard gender roles. After the war, there was some regression to prior roles, but the genie was already out of the bottle. It was the beginning of lasting changes.Likewise, some rules of (moral) behavior were blurred or bent. In the film, the affair of Kay and Lucky is portrayed as a happy thing, though Kay surely feels guilt. But we also see that the friends and coworkers who surround them also accept their relationship--not necessarily on a permanent basis, but at least for the duration of the war, which to some extent has suspended the conventions of society. When Jack comes home on 48 hour leave, she says, "I'm not the same. And neither are you."The film is not very subtle, but it really captures the era of the forties. The acting is solid but, as others have noted, Christine Lahti as the neighbor and coworker, Hazel, really stands out. For a more compelling film of this era, see "The Way We Were".

SnoopyStyle It's 1941 Santa Monica. Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) is happily married. Her fisherman husband Jack (Ed Harris) enlists after Pearl Harbor. Kay gets a job at the aircraft plant despite Jack's objections. Their lounge singer neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti) is tired of her manager Archibald 'Biscuits' Touie (Fred Ward) and doesn't like the Walshes either who often snicker at her. Eventually, the two women become best of friends at the sexist plant on the swing shift from four to midnight. Kay starts to fall for her supervisor trumpet player Mike 'Lucky' Lockhart (Kurt Russell).He's a player hound-dogging a married woman. She doesn't come off that well either. There has to be a higher degree of douchness from Jack to excuse her cheating on him. He is a male chauvinist but not necessarily worst than everybody else including Lucky. As a rom-com, it's very awkward. I really couldn't take the bad romance. For this to work, this has to be a darker drama. All the lightness has to go. Goldie Hawn is the wrong person to go there. There is a wrong tone to the movie. I don't know which version I saw although I suspect it's not the director's cut.