LAW AND WHITAKER IN “REPO MEN.”

Repo Men
Rated (R) // Is it worth $10? No // Hudak grades it a C

By Dan Hudak

The inspiration behind “Repo Men” makes a lot of sense. We may think we “own” our houses and cars, but the truth is the bank often owns much more of them than we do. And when we stop making payments, the bank claims what’s rightfully theirs.

“Repo Men” takes this idea to the future. At a company called The Union, technology has advanced to the point where artificial kidneys, knees, eyes and pretty much any other body part can replace faulty human organs. They’re called “artiforgs,” short for “artificial organs.” Then when patients can’t make the hefty payments, Union boss Frank (Liev Schreiber) sends in his repo men to repossess the parts in a series of extraction scenes that aren’t too bad if you don’t mind squirting blood.

Now let’s think about this for a second. If your vital organs are in such bad condition that you need a mechanical transplant, and then the artiforg is removed because you didn’t pay your bill on time, won’t most patients die when the organ is removed? Isn’t this murder? Moral of the story: Pay your bills or you’re dead.
Two of the repo men are Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker), lifelong frenemies who love the adrenaline rush of repossession. Remy’s cranky wife (Carice van Houten) wants him to get a new line of work, but before he does a defibrillator he’s using malfunctions and he wakes up with an artificial heart.

This would be fine if he could still work and make the payments, but he can’t seem to do his job anymore, so he teams up with an artiforg-filled lounge singer (Alice Braga) to escape the repo men. There are elements of an interesting story in Garrett Lerner and Eric Garcia’s (who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, “The Repossession Mambo”) script, which makes it even more shameful that they don’t offer more than the standard hunter-becomes-the-hunted storyline.

What we do get in director Miguel Sapochnik’s first feature-length film is a series of action/escape scenes that are adequate but not impressive. Not only have we seen all this countless times before, we’ve seen it done much better (“Minority Report,” “District 9”). Worse, the ending is a real letdown, and as such is a confirmation that everything about the movie (aside from the premise) is a bad idea.

“Repo Men” was an opportunity to say something interesting about futuristic technology and humanity while entertaining us along the way. And it is moderately entertaining, but it’s also unoriginal, uninspired and disappointing.

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