Repo Men (R)

Fall behind on your mortgage? The bank takes your house. Fall behind on your car payments? The bank takes your car. But what happens if you get a heart transplant and fall behind on your organ payments? This is the premise of the 2010 sci-fi thriller “Repo Men” starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. Law (Remy) and Whitaker (Jake) make an unlikely duo, men who work for a greedy conglomeration called “The Union” in a future where deaths from organ failure are a thing of the past – provided you can pay for it. To call the movie bizarre is an understatement; but in satire we can often learn life’s most poignant lessons. However, “Repo Men” falls short of this aim, coming off part sci-fi, part gore, and at the end of the day making us glad that we still live in a century where feats like this are beyond the scope of possibility. 

How do these men perform their jobs? It’s quite simple. When a subject falls four months short on their organ payments, a repo man breaks into their house, shoots them with a stun gun and repossesses said organ. “I’m supposed to ask you if you want to have an ambulance standing by…” states Remy. “Are they going to give me a new heart?” responds the subject. “Not likely with your credit,” Remy finishes. Modern parallels are drawn to a world where we have the compassion and skill but not the technology. In “The Union” barbarism or detachment is often the forte of repo men as they do a job. Why does Remy care more? Answers aren’t forthcoming.

Remy gets a rude awakening, however, when he receives a nasty electrical shock during a job and is forced to undergo a heart transplant. The scene stretches the limits of believability (are we really to believe an electric shock would destroy his heart and require a new ‘unit?’) but sets the stage for the rest of the movie. Glimpsing humanity through the tragedy, Remy can no longer perform his duties as a Repo Man – putting him dangerously behind in his heart payments and ultimately in the line of fire of his partner and friend Jake who’s been sent to collect.

“Repo Men’s” acting is fairly competent all around. Jude Law, who has shown sci-fi chops before in Andrew Niccol’s 1997 drama “GATTACA” pulls off the difficult tightrope act as a man who starts out a soulless repo man but ends up discovering his humanity as he learns what it means to need something to survive that you can’t pay for. Likewise, Forest Whitaker is effective as Remy’s ruthless sidekick, a man who served with him in the war and never has to question whether what he does is right. “A job’s a job,” he states throughout. But he never hears Remy’s retort to this unfinished statement. “A job’s not just a job. It’s who you are.”

Of the cast, the one who comes off the least believable, and, for lack of a better word, mean, is Live Schreiber as the duo’s boss Frank. His decision to replace Remy’s heart after the accident without his consent, and to then send his very own repo men after him when he cannot pay makes absolutely no sense, and comes off all the more contrived masked with the sarcastic disregard for life that Schreiber brings to the table. One particular scene toward the end as Remy and a fellow fugitive (Alicia Braga) he befriends ‘repo’ their own organs in a brutal attempt to get out of harm’s way is oddly touching and poignant. However Frank’s quip for Jake to “put an end to it” — as if they were simply holding up the line at the bank and not trying to save their lives – stretches his character’s short leash of credibility a bit too far.

The disappointing aspect of “Repo Men” lies in a lack of direction and focus, which completely breaks down during the third act. There are seemingly several endings tacked on, one after the other, as though Director Miguel Sapochink was experimenting with several possible conclusions and simply couldn’t find the right one. The actual ending is forced, goofy, and nonsensical — and tramples on viewer’s patience who, despite several uncommitted character decisions, come to really care about Remy and his forlorn Repo Man by this point.

“Repo Man” is a bizarre film, made all the more bizarre wrapped in the twists and turns contained in its 111-minute run-time. It doesn’t have a lot of character development, but it does have action, suspense, and drama hidden beneath the surface. While a stronger film would have picked a genre and stuck to it, it does manage to create several parallels to modern society, especially in the wake of continued arguments for Universal Healthcare. Could society go this far in the quest for science and greed? Maybe. It’s a tale better left untold. “If you’re not ready to change yourself,” Remy narrates, “change what you do.” “Repo Men” doesn’t exactly say that change needs to be a change toward greater humanity. But by this point maybe it doesn’t have to.

– by Mark Ziobro