Repo Men

The future. Where you can get any replacement organ you need. Heart, eye, lung, spleen…anything. However, these replacement parts are expensive and come at a price. Make sure to keep up on your payments, or you’ll get a Repo Man sent after you, and that Repo Man will collect your organs!

Alright, I’m not even going to get into the fact that another Repo Man movie came out not too long ago, nor will I linger on the hilariously great Repo Man from the 80′s. No, I viewed this as it’s own Repo Man movie, (er..repo MEN), because well, this movie is nothing like those, of course. From the commercials, it looked as though this was going to be a pretty standard action flick, with the old story of ‘partners work together in morally gray area, one partner sees the light, now they must face off against each other’, and mostly, it was just that.

Hey, I have an idea...

Of course, the biggest theme is about health care, and the scam it involves. Sure, we can save you with a new, fully functioning human organ, but it’s not cheap, and when you sign on the dotted line you agree to the terms of payment and if you don’t keep up, well…what is your life worth to you?

Even though this is the central theme of the movie, it is not lingered on much, as it is much more about the actual men who repossess the organs. Well, one man, at least. I would say that the whole theme is original, were it not for another movie that was released with mostly the same basic plot. Oh, sorry, I said I wouldn’t get into that, so let’s move on.

There are some really fun action set pieces in this movie, some of which surprised me, because when you think action star, Jude Law isn’t really the first name to come to mind, but with this and his role in Sherlock Holmes, maybe he’s changing things up a bit and having some fun with being an action guy.

Relax, this won't hurt...well, yes it will.

Speaking of Jude, he carries the film just fine. As I mentioned just above, it was very interesting to see him in a role like this, one where he’s playing the bad ass tough guy type. He doesn’t play it like Arnie or anything, no, not at all. There’s only one Arnie, after all. He also doesn’t play it with ego, (although the character does have one, but that comes across from the character, not the actor), nor does he try to upstage anyone. He does exactly what he has to, and does it well.

I really like the three lead male actors in this flick. Jude Law is a damn fine actor, as is Forrest Whitacker, and Liev Shrieber is good as usual, although I think he is still vastly underrated as an actor, and underused a bit here. The unfortunate thing is that Whitaker isn’t given much to do, and Shrieber even less than that. However, that is the least of this movie’s problems.

You see, this movie suffers from one of the laziest cliches in film: ‘the dream’ symptom. Sure it was groundbreaking decades ago, (maybe), but even the most casual moviegoer these days is more than likely to scoff at it.

Repo, Matrix style.

Granted, not ALL movies that utilize this device are terrible. Some use it very creatively, and those films I commend, as they are able to take such a lame, tired, old cliché and make good with it, but those are very far and few between. Unfortunately for Repo Men, it relies on said ‘dream’ device in the laziest way possible, and it actually pissed me off at the end of the flick. There were so many other ways they could have gone, and to choose this one…well again, it just shows laziness.

Even though the story was pretty conventional, it was a fun movie until that stupid, lazy ending. I really cannot express it enough.  LAZY.  So much so that it actually ruined everything I had watched before it. Why? Because it negates the entire film, a problem I also had with the ‘director’s cut’ ending of The Butterfly Effect.

I’m hoping that when the DVD releases, they gives us some extra content, such as the ‘real’ or ‘alternate’ endings. It could possibly make this movie a whole lot better. Not that it wasn’t a fun ride up to that point, it was, but then they went and just ruined the entire experience. LAZY.

Author: Devon

A dude who likes movies. Well, most of them.

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