Jude Law wears the future well.
First glance at his feckless exterior, the rakish, devil-may-care attitude, and trademark smarm ousts him as comic relief or romantic interest. He’s a background, side-kick presence in modern-day films, but something about his demeanor and poise causes him to spring to life when placed in artificial worlds of the mind.
He’s the prototypical future man, stripped of obvious rugged qualities and embodying a kind of existential indifference to the cares of the world. Law excels at being oddly normal in a world that is anything but. Just look at Gattaca, A.I., eXistenZ, and Sky Captain. Now, he returns to the future with Repo Men, and surprisingly shucks the passive, fey observer for a hard-edged action hero. The result is slight but quite entertaining.
Repo Men, directed by Miguel Sapochnik, is a bloody, grim sci-fi thriller that heads off into outrageous action and near-satire levels of goofy for its final act. It tells the story of a future world where artificial organs can be purchased on lease, with recipients contracted to pay for them in total by the end of 3 months. If you happen to fail at the last part, the Union’s (the company providing the organs) repo-men will show up at your door, stun you, and then quickly and efficiently remove the merchandise.
Law plays one of these repo men, Remy, who comes into contact with Beth, a young woman whose body turns out to be mostly rent-to-own organs. Remy has a pretty expensive piece of biological installation himself, and when it comes down to making the decision to repo Beth or go on the run, he chooses the latter. Because, without that, there’s no movie.
As it turns out, there’s barely any movie anyway. Although it pains me to point this out, Repo Men, in addition to appropriating the title of Alex Cox’s 1980′s cult film, has also lifted wholesale the plot of 2008′s Repo: The Genetic Opera!, minus of course the musical interludes and the neon tacky future sets. The rest of the picture is a cut and paste job of other science fiction faves, like Blade Runner, Minority Report, Equilibrium.
A sequence where Law and Braga open each other up (in the surgical sense) in order to destabilize the bar codes on their hijacked parts is reminiscent of Law’s own scenes in A.I, with Gigolo Joe removing his make and model number, and existenZ, where Dafoe helps Law’s hacker install a painful ‘bioport’ into his back. By the end, where Remy is storming the Union with all manner of sharp and deadly weapons, we are fully into Matrix territory and I noticed my check-off list was complete.
If you were to repossess this movie’s stolen parts, there wouldn’t be anything left but a handful of good performances gasping for breath in a pool of half-written ideas. And yet, that’s entirely too harsh on my part, because I did have a certain amount of fun with Repo Men. It helps if you are a sci-fi junkie, and did enjoy those movies I’ve previously mentioned. Repo Men glides so willingly along that it’s easy to allow it an extension on its rental of the borrowed bits just to see where it’s going. With Law redesigning his image and giving us a new way to perceive him–as masculine movie hero– there’s something to focus on, and with Forest Whittaker playing his partner Jake, and Braga as his charge, the movie has a solid emotional base.
What it lacks is any kind of ambition. This one is pure mindless entertainment, but it excels in that regard. I was never bored, never terribly concerned by the plot holes on screen, and when the turn of the screw comes for Law’s character, I bought it. In a time when half the action movies going don’t give us anyone of note to root for, it’s nice to see a picture where there are several interesting characters.
It’s just a shame they were transplanted in a body where the greatest function they can perform is life support.
Rating: 
Did you see Pandorum? It sounds a lot like that. Not in terms of what the movie is about or anything but in terms of movie qaulity I guess?
Like its got a bunch of ideas stolen from 100 other movies but its well done and well acted, and enough of its own thing to not just be a complete copy.
Man I never thought about it, but you are right Law is in a bunch of Syfy movies. YET when I think of Syfy movie actors his name dones pop up.
His SNL sucked as well.
Actually he didn’t want to repo quite a few other people prior to Braga’s character so it wasn’t her that stopped him plus he was pretty much going to be on the run prior to seeing her anyway.
In the movie as long as you are paying monthly installments you’re fine because they got you hooked on so many interest fees you’re like a walking talking ATM hooked up with their goods. So it’s not 3 months or the plug is pulled.
The fight scenes and storming of the HQ is nothing like the Matrix by any stretch of the imagination unless you’re comparing all fight scenes in all movies to that of the matrix.
In a world where there are literally tons of movies its difficult to find a name for one that hasn’t already been used before so saying that it appropriated it is a bit pretentious as is claiming they took the whole plot from “The Genetic Opera.” When in reality they took choice bits and pieces and surgically added their own parts.
The sequence where they ‘open each other up’ isn’t to destabilize the bar codes but to make it seem as if their debts and therefore their accounts are no longer in the system so that they couldn’t be hunted which is a far cry from what happened in both AI and existenZ.
There are at least a dozen other things that are akin to gaping plot holes with your review. I’d recommend watching the movie next time before deciding to do a review on it.
There are no gaping holes in the review, just purposefully being vague to save the audience the experience of the film which you are gladly spoiling in your comments.
‘Destabilizing the bar codes’ is a shorthand way of describing it without giving away the nifty secret of what specifically they were doing. Not sure how I’d even have that bit of info without seeing the movie, but whatever. Again, thanks for clearing that up.
I wasn’t saying those scenes were identical, but rather they do have the same sort of purpose in the plot, just as Cruise getting his retnas removed in Minority Report does. I’m not going to suggest that they are point for point, just noticing similarities.
I’m not sure you have actually seen Repo: The Genetic Opera. I have, and the basic tenant of the plot is the same–a company creates artificial organs, sets up payment plans for people who want them, and sends a viscious Repo man after them to collect. Yes, it’s a musical, and the thrust of the narrative is different. The resulting world, despite the kitschy trash look of Repo, is quite similar. It’s hardly the name similarity. Besides, Repo Men, when it was in script form, was called Repossession Mambo, which was far more distinguishable from Cox’s film and Repo: The Genetic Opera.
The Matrix comparison isn’t about how the scene is shot, but just pointing out that it comes down to a small group against a mass system. Again, Minority Report wasn’t like this, but Equilibrium was.
I could give you a scene by scene recap to prove I saw it, but that’s not the purpose of the review. I stick by my original assessment; it’s quite a fun movie, but nothing terribly original.
I’m sure you can at least agree upon that.