Repo Men

Repo Men is a futuristic sci-scare film that follows the life of a blue-collar company man working for a large corporation known as “The Union”.   His task is simple, if you have an organ resting in your body that was provided by his firm and you can’t make the payments on said organ, he “harvests” it back to the “The Union”.

Like all large corporations, or governments, you don’t just pop over and ask for an organ, first you meet with an “official” who sets up the paperwork – then you get the transplant, then, inevitably, you pay!  What’s that, can’t afford your payments, you say the check is in the mail, your dog ate your checkbook, Remy (Jude Law) doesn’t give a flying fig – that isn’t his department.  He is with retrieval, not billing – woe be the man who makes his professional acquaintance.  Once he shows up, you are gonna bleed.

Remy is partnered with Jake (Forrest Whitaker) who is a little more gritty than Remy, but enjoys what he does nonetheless. Both Remy and Jake work for a smarmy, no excuses boss, Frank (Liev Schreiber), who will talk you into wanting the organ, by talking you into purchasing it, but then waste little to no time to send out his Repo Men to recover it when you fall behind on your payments.  The irony of the heartless doling out hearts is cute, but not effective here.

Remy’s wife, Carol (Carice van Houten), wants Remy to move into sales for his safety and the well being of his family. But, Remy enjoys his job too much, still he wants to do what’s best for his family – so reluctantly Remy lets Jake know of his dilemma.   While on a successful hunt running down deadbeats, Remy lets Frank know of his intentions. So, Jake sets up one last repossession for Remy before he moves into sales, and Remy goes to the house of one of his heroes, T-Bone ( a cameo by the RZA).  When Remy attempts to take back T-Bone’s heart, something goes terribly wrong, and Remy’s equipment malfunctions and he gets the shock of the defibrillator himself.  Waking up in the hospital with The Union’s latest, top of the line heart, Remy knows this can’t be good.  It isn’t what he  wants, but quickly he discovers it is the only way that he can survive.

Remy’s life falls completely to shit after he gets a new heart, his wife has kicked him out of his house, won’t let him speak to his son, and hands him his first Late Notice of payment on his new heart. Remy attempts to make the money for payments by returning to work for The Union as a salesman.  Sales isn’t his strong spot, so he takes back to the streets as a repo man. From there, the story takes a predictable turn as Remy becomes the hunted.  While on the run, Remy encounters a woman that he’s seen only once before, Beth (Alice Braga), and decides to help her out of a bad situation. This is where the movie begins to intensify, and more of the action begins to happen. We follow Remy and Beth on the run from various Repo Men The Union sends after them.

The film never explains time or location, maybe by design to add the authenticity, but it fails to pull that off.  The action scenes are few and far between, and the character development is almost non-existent. The plot was choppy and hard to follow – simply because there was NO definition of time lapsed throughout the movie. The violence was graphic, BUT if you don’t believe there would be scenes of graphic violence in this movie I have NO idea what the hell you thought you were going to be watching. The movie was long, I almost fell asleep and I drank a friggin’ Red Bull before I went in the theater.

Repo Men really didn’t have much to offer anyone, and I wish I could have gone and repo’d my money back! I won’t spoil anything for those who want to go see it, and if you do WOW, but the ending of the movie made a bad movie worse! I feel there were a couple humorous lines and one scene of decent action that gave the movie at least something to enjoy; but in a movie that runs almost 2 hours, 5 minutes that doesn’t make up the slack.