Repo Men
Imagine a future where medical science has advanced by leaps and bounds, and a person can replace any of their body parts, no matter how essential. One company, The Union, can supply anything you need. If you’re vain, they can perfect you. If you’re dying, they can save you. Eyes, ears, heart, lungs – hell, even your brain can essentially be replaced. Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately, it ain’t cheap. If you fall behind on your payments to The Union, someone’s going to come looking for you. These soldiers of fortune, Repo Men, will cut you open and repossess every single organ you haven’t paid for…and let’s just say, they’re none too concerned about your comfort. If you try to run, they’ll catch you. If you try to hide, they’ll find you. If you try to fight, they’ll pummel you unconscious because you pissed them off, and they’ll probably starting cutting you open whether your unconscious or not.
The film opens with Remy (Jude Law), an over-zealous Repo Man, whose talent for repossessing organs is matched by his unbridled enthusiasm for doing so. When you default on your payments to The Union and Remy comes looking for you…you’re going to wind up dead. There is no bargaining with Remy. If you actually have the money to get your payments current on your artificial heart, Remy doesn’t care, he doesn’t want to hear your life story, he’s just there to do his job. Unfortunately for Remy, his wife doesn’t approve of his work, no matter how well suited her husband is to the role of a Repo Man. To please his wife, Remy begrudgingly agrees to leave the repo department and take a job in sales – but not before ONE LAST JOB, at the urging of his co-worker and best pal Jake (Forrest Whitaker) .
Jake loves his job just as much, if not more than Remy. To Jake, a job is a job. He and Remy are the best in the business, and an unstoppable team because the circumstances of the debtors they relentlessly hunt don’t matter to either of them in the slightest. They love their jobs to such a ridiculous extent that we know that one of them is going to wind with an artificial organ that they can’t make the payments on.
Sure enough, a freak accident with a set of defibrillators sends Remy to the hospital. After initial reluctance, Remy gets an artificial heart transplant. Even though he gets his repossession job back, he finds himself suddenly unwilling and unable to do the work, and soon enough he’s behind on his hefty monthly payments. Even though his wife leaves him and he’s soon to hit rock bottom, no amount of coaxing from Jake can get Remy to resume his role as a Repo Man. It’s not long until he has defaulted on his payments , and not even Remy is safe from the wrath of Jake or his other cohorts in repo.
I’ll not divulge much more, except to say that Remy soon realizes what’s like to be pursued. He falls in love with another lost soul , Beth (Alice Braga) while he’s on the run, and he fights The Union with all of the skills he gained as Repo Man. The film goes all over the map, from drama, to black comedy, and finally to non-stop action movie. It all culminates in a breakneck roller coaster ride of shoot outs and bloody knife (and hatchet) fights that will either having you cheering or looking away at the screen, depending on your sensibilities.
Much like the desperate citizens of the future it portrays, Repo Men has been cobbled together and enhanced with spare parts that either on loan or outright stolen. Blade Runner, Total Recall, and to some extent The Matrix are all borrowed from shamelessly – but effectively – and backed by typically great work from both Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, and competent direction by first timer Miguel Sapochnik.
At its worst, Repo Men can be seen as just another over stylized, futurist shoot ‘em up, but at its core it’s a fairly good satire with some action thrown in to disguise the social commentary. Given the state of the present day world, with people losing their jobs and their homes in a seemingly never-ending spiral, this cynical future may not seem as ridiculous or implausible as at it should; and therein lies the beauty of Repo Men. It’s a film that finds itself in the right place at the right time – if you’re in the right state of mind. You’re either going to enjoy the ride or get out of the theater and scratch your head and wonder what the hell you just spent two hours watching…but quite simply if this film and it’s not-so-thinly veiled message don’t resonate now, I’m not sure when it will.
Repo Men • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 111 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for for strong bloody violence, grisly images, language and some sexuality/nudity. • Distributed by Universal Pictures