Repo Men

While no one will ever confuse Repo Men for an original film, or even a great one, I must admit it's been made with a certain degree of skill. The movie on the whole is kind of fun and held my interest, there's a lot of lively songs on the soundtrack, the cast holds their own, and the action sequences are cleanly edited, so we can actually tell at all times what's going on. You know things in the action genre are getting bad when I'm actually praising a movie for letting me see what's going on during a fight sequence.

The film introduces us to a futuristic society that's heavily influenced by the one seen in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. For sci-fi fans, this won't be the last time they'll pointing out a similarity or "influence" to a past film while watching it, but I digress. We learn of a shady corporation called The Union. They specialize in state of the art organ and body part replacement technology that's highly advanced, and seems to be used by just about everyone in this world. The head of the corporation is a slimy and slicked back tycoon named Frank (Liev Schreiber, pulling off the slimy and slicked back very well here). He promises potential customers that if they use his company's artificial hearts, lungs, what have you, they will have a longer and fuller life with their loved ones. Of course, he doesn't mention what happens if by any chance you can't pay for your new internal organ that's now keeping you alive. He has a team of brutes whose job is to track down people who are behind on their payments, break into their house, zap the non-paying customer with a stun gun, then remove the artificial organ or body part through the means of on-the-spot surgery. They're known as the Repo Men, and since everyone seem to use the Union's body replacement technology, business is booming on both ends.

We meet two of the top members of the Repo team, Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker). They're good at what they do, and work together well, since they've been friends since childhood. For them, tracking these people down, cutting them open, removing whatever needs to be returned to the Union, and leaving the customer to die is all part of the job. It's somewhat chilling the first time we see Remy do it with such cold accuracy and total nonchalance. Jake thinks they both have the perfect job, but Remy has a family, and his wife (Carice von Houten) doesn't like the idea of what her husband does for a living, nor does she think it makes him a good role model for their young son (Chandler Canterbury). She wants Remy to take a desk job at the company instead, but when he hesitates, she and the kid walk out. Remy wants to win their trust back, and agrees to a different job, but makes the unwise decision to do one last job as a Repo Man. On this particular job, his equipment backfires on him, gravely injuring himself instead of the intended target. When Remy awakens, he's in a hospital with a new artificial heart provided by his own company beating away inside of him.

I can understand if you think Repo Men sounds a bit gruesome so far, and while it certainly can be bloody, there's a darkly comic tone to the script by Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner that keeps things from getting too brutal. Besides, the movie seldom slows down long enough to let the gory details sink in, since this is a high tech chase picture. Now that Remy has a personal connection with the people he's charged with going after, he finds he can no longer kill them and remove their artificial organs. With him not being able to make any money on the job, it doesn't take long for him to start receiving notices in the mail that he's behind on his own payments for the heart inside of him. He has no choice but to go on the run, aided by a woman named Beth (Alice Braga), who has every reason to be on the run, as she's filled with many replacement parts (ears, eyes, lungs, etc). I would have liked to have seen a stronger personal relationship between the two characters, as it would have made their more intimate scenes stand out more. They decide they need to break into Union headquarters, and delete their personal files if they ever want to survive. This leads to a lot of gun battles, martial arts fights with the various thugs sent after them, and a twist ending that makes sense upon reflection, but still feels like a bit of a cheat.

Look, I'm not saying this is a great movie, or even a good one. But director Miguel Sapochnik obviously knows what he's doing. His directing style is energetic and fast, and he knows how to stage a fight sequence, such as one that occurs in an airport, and the climactic sequence where the heroes take on a wave of attackers with a variety of weapons, ranging from guns to hacksaws. He also has a good sense of tongue-in-cheek humor, which is displayed throughout. The cast wisely pretends that they are not on to this fact, and take this material seriously. If it ever felt like the actors were winking to the camera, it would have sent the entire film crashing to the ground. If only the pacing were a little better. There are long stretches where not much seems to happen, and we find ourselves waiting. If Sapochnik could have tightened the film, he'd have a full-on guilty pleasure here. As it stands, this is a promising film from a promising fairly new filmmaker that stumbles, but still manages to entertain.

Sitting through the end credits, I was surprised to see that the copyright date is from back in 2008, meaning Repo Men has been sitting on the studio shelf for two years or so. It's certainly better than most films studios are afraid to release, and is even better than some movies that get pushed into release with no hesitation at all. This is a movie that will never be known as being art, but it can be kind of fun if you're in the right mind set.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments