Repo Men began as Repossession Mambo and it’s been charged with stealing the premise of the Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich play, which was adapted into Repo! The Genetic Opera in 2008. While the premise of the two is very much the same, the direction they follow to their conclusions is just as much different. However, fans of the play or even the operatic feature film shouldn’t be too worried, as much as this film is a rip-off of those two projects there are a lot more pieces of film history to be found in director Miguel Sapochnik’s bloody feature. One word you will hear often when this film is discussed is “derivative” and it’s not far off base, but as much as this film bites off other features I must admit I wasn’t overly disturbed watching it.
Conjuring up a world made famous by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the not-so-distant future of Repo Men is rather familiar. The only difference being cars are still firmly attached to the ground, but advertising among the skyscrapers runs rampant with ads for The Union taking up most of the real estate. The Union is a company making money off your organs, or more specifically, the artificial organs they sell to people at a premium. Such a price could run you as much as $680,000 for a new liver with an introductory interest rate of 19.6%. The catch, however, is should you get too far behind on your monthly installments you may get a visit from Remy or Jake.
Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forrest Whitaker) are repo men in service for The Union. They work on commission and overdue organs are their sale. They’ll track you down, retrieve the goods and leave you to die where you are. The idea sounded like a black comedy to me, and occasionally Repo Men allows itself to have fun inside this hodgepodge of films that came before it. Mechanical eyes that change colors and mechanical ears complete with headphone jacks and behind-the-ear volume control are only a couple of tongue-in-cheek additions. Unfortunately Sapochnik couldn’t decide if he wanted more black comedy or more action, either way the film is too long to sustain either genre until the end.
Moviegoers looking for Sapochnik’s inspiration in terms of design and execution won’t have to look too far or even think too hard. As I mentioned, the cityscape is reminiscent of Blade Runner, the weaponry reminds me of Minority Report and many of the sets resemble most every post-apocalyptic film you’ve ever seen, I’ll use I Am Legend as a recent example. Other films that come to mind are Brazil and Vanilla Sky, while there’s a hallway brawl that is trying its hardest to look like Oldboy (but doesn’t). I won’t complain about this stuff because it didn’t necessarily bother me as much as it just didn’t feel new, which is really the point with a new movie… Isn’t it? Perhaps if we’ve seen one dystopian thriller we’ve seen them all, only the faces change each time.
Strangely enough, I like the casting decision to have Law and Whitaker teaming as badass organ-chasing repo men, but I like them in my idea of a black comedy, not as they are presented here. Whitaker goes about like a goon preaching, “A job’s a job,” while Law is considering moving into sales to be with his wife and kid more often and get away from the daily grind of legally killing people for money. In a film that basically boils down to a foot chase what good is familial attachment? The only one that seemed to get what the film should be about is Liev Schreiber as a corporate executive at The Union. Now he seemed to be having fun, and God bless him he seems to be getting better every time I see him.
As an amalgamation of several sci-fi and post-apocalyptic films Repo Men is a semi-decent diversion if only to satiate a blood and gore fix. Unfortunately, it takes itself way too seriously, which makes the more humorous moments feel just as out of place as the tacked on ending. If you have no other options I guess you can give this one a chance, but lower those expectations a notch before doing so, and then perhaps one more notch after that.
