Repo Men

hi

Despite the powerful team of actors and apparently brilliant script, Repo Men in itself is not a new idea that is fresh to the market, but is unfortunately the competitor of a movie that was swept under the rug, nearly two years before this release, and ran for 10 years as a rock opera under the radar. For those who desire something more, or felt that Repo Men could not deliver, the original piece, Repo! the Genetic Opera, is far superior, and is no doubt more inventive. Jude Law, a brilliant actor, blew me away with his performance and genuinely made the movie worth acting in its own. The gore was moderately realistic, and the plot was unoriginal, but I feel that Law's unique portrayal and distinctive performance made the movie worth paying for, but perhaps only once.

The first scifi film i have actually hated. i love scifi, i wathc them all the Hollywood ones,the old ones,the b-movies (most of them are). i can forgive a lot for a scifi movie if the concept is good in its bones. This movie is based on two long time friends working as repomen. they basically take back modern version of pacemakers etc when they cant pay the bills. they cut people open in the street. they kill them in the homes and has some gore. But the movies has a twist. the difference between this movie and a good movie is if you use a anecdote detail to change the point of view from a film it must only change the way you see the same structure from a to b. but in this movie it actually deletes 1/3 of the movie and removes the reward for dragging yourself trough this black bitter depressive sludge that the other 2/3 are. this movie tells you that: friendship is false and pointless. love is false and pointless. that this movie is false and pointless. that the viewer is false and pointless. its the only scifi where i have wanted to meet the movie maker behind it and punch him in the face for wasting my time with some personal bitter scorn against the world.

This movie is a great analogy between what happened due to "the innovations" in the financial world. Example: "Sure you need to buy this house and sign for the mortgage ... you owe it to yourself ... you owe it to your family" ... And a couple of years later they take away your house and leave you with a great debt that also ruins your life and may even cost your life. More and more people are not able to cope anymore and commit suicide and sometimes even kill their own young children to "spare them". The people that come to collect or sell your stuff can be compared with the repo man. They can do it, until they're a victim themselves ... What I didn't like about this representation of how the system has become way more important than what is was for ... is the amount of blood. Still, it makes it all the more horribly and painfully clear what we're dealing with here ... What I liked about the story, is how it's presented that the bond between two people ain't all that clear. It was astounding to find out how it finally turns out what Jake has arranged for Remy.

This was really a great film, from the moment it began to the twist at the end. Jude Law really has become a class actor. Forrester is really menacing and lends his heavyweight acting presence to the role. Still, I cannot believe people are rating so low , do they simply not get it? Its a sci fi action flick, entertaining and a good way to spend a few hours. (ie rotten tomatoes 22%!!! its captivating, thrilling and intelligent. The action scenes are awesome, really well crafted. Only bit that frustrated me was Jude Laws wife crackpot turn, I mean "a jobs a job" , right? well acted, good action, great pace, good twist , simply put- great film entertainment

Although it looks like a sci-fi man-on-the-run thriller, Repo Men is substandard action that takes itself far too seriously and, in fact, isn't really sure what it wants to be when it grows up. Jude Law stars as an employee of a company that sells artificial organs to lucky ducks who need them – at high interest rates – and then repossesses them when the payments aren't met. The ads for this movie made it look almost like a satirical look at health care. Repo Men is set in the near future, when apparently everyone needs organs of some kind. Law plays Remy, the top employee at The Union (of course he is) who undergoes an epiphany when he blacks out and needs a new heart (of course he does), the payments for which (of course) he eventually can't make. Will The Union send someone – maybe his longtime partner Jake (Forest Whitaker) to repo the heart? Or will Remy, who now sees how badly immoral he's been, somehow topple the evil predatory corporation? We'll pretend, for the sake of argument, that this is science fiction. After all, you don't see companies – private companies, mind you – attacking citizens and harvesting their organs, right? But that's about the only fictitious aspect of this movie, because it's mired in clichés of movies and everyday life anyway. Sci-fi can be tough to write; it has to be smart enough to stand under the weight of its own science but be entertaining enough to sell the plot. Repo Men isn't smart or entertaining, except to bloodbath aficionados, I suppose. What is Remy's motivation, except to survive? Are we supposed to see him as the plucky good guy going up against an evil company? Tough to do that when he slaughters scores and scores of people, even unarmed, even by hacksaw and sword. Remy doesn't seem so much as someone trying to do the right thing as someone trying to settle a personal score. Naturally, this culminates with an extended fight scene in which Remy – and his new heroine, Beth (Alice Braga) – take on not only tough goons from the corporation but also apparent office wonks, complete with neckties and pocket protectors and armed with almost nothing. The ending is especially ludicrous, involving a hare-brained scheme to get themselves out of The Union's system (which shows them as delinquent), as if that's all it takes. Remy accomplishes this in full view of the company's honcho (Liev Schrieber) and his own (ex) partner, Jake. "See, I'm not in the system! I rule!" Well, yeah, but they saw you do it and they know you're overdue, so what the heck, Jake? It's not Chinatown. Repo Men is riddled with plot twists that are either blindingly obvious or make little sense. Even propelling the plot isn't a task these twists are up to. To be sure, there's plenty of action, but it feels almost out of place. It's also very bloody, which you expect from a movie in which the main characters slice open living humans to grab their livers or whatever, but it's very bloody on top of that, with knives slammed into necks, limbs seemingly hacked off, and so on. The two twists near the end are almost Shyamalanesque, in that they seem to be there merely because they're twists of some sort, not because they're plausible or, you know, not ridiculous. Repo Men might not be the worst of the first quarter of 2010, but it has to be a front runner. A waste of a good cast, particularly Whitaker and Schrieber.

The experienced moviegoer will feel some apprehension even before viewing this film. It's a first-time feature director with an ambitious story but a budget well below the studio tent- pole level, a lead star who isn't quite the highest of the high A (and whom we don't think of when we think action), and a side-kick whose strange acting technique, a kind of maudlin distractedness, seems particularly ill-suited for a genre picture. The apprehension is well placed, but things turn out even worse than one imagined. The film's art design is ugly, modern and dystopian of course, but not in an interesting way (a la Bladerunner), and the film stock itself appears grimy (even on a new print). The actors are generally out at sea, miscast and understandably befuddled by a tone that ranges from serious action, to silly (embarrassing) buddy pic, to Guy Ritchie-wannabe frozen frames and pretentious hipster dialog. The characters aren't especially sympathetic: their unarmed victims get shot like fish in a barrel so we don't ever buy the "heroic" status of the protagonists. Jude Law's uxorious character is henpecked by a nasty, dour-looking Carice van Houten (so wonderful in The Black Book) and our empathy for him isn't heightened by his friendship with the psychotic Forrest Whittaker character, who delivers the head-tilting wide grins and lachrymose pouts he usually does, only this time as an improbable violent action figure. It all makes for slow going with 45 minutes needed for a shift into the 2nd act and a story we all knew was going to happen anyway, with the hunter becoming the hunted. Things don't improve here either with the filmmakers determined to make Alice Braga unappealing, and doing their best to keep the action going with expected twists and louder music. Can't tell you how it ends, I was driving home long before the finale.

Repo Men could have been a really cool cyberpunk type movie, but it wasn't. Think Bladerunner but not as gritty, intelligent, or good. Jude Law and Forrest Whittaker play a pair of repo men that work for an evil corporation that manufactures and distributes artificial human organs. When people fall behind on their payments the repo men come to take the organs back. I don't really understand the business model being used in this movie. The organs cost in the neighborhood of $600,000 and the interest rate on the loan of the organ is 19.95%. The salesman have a variety of payment plans available for a variety of lifestyles should you not be able to afford to buy the organ up front. Throughout the movie organs are repossessed from alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, the homeless, and just about everyone else you wouldn't give a loan or an organ to. Sure the corporation just hunts them down and takes back their organs, but why did they give them out in the first place? It turns out that they do that because if they didn't Jude Law and Forrest Whittaker wouldn't have anything to do and the movie would resemble the Maytag repairman commercials. Anyway, things are going poorly for Jude Law because his wife has problems with her husband going out an effectively murdering people. Law decides to give up the repo business after one last job. Unfortunately for Law he suffers an accident that damages his heart and he has to get an artificial one. After recovering he no longer looks at things the same and can no longer carve people up for a living. As a result Law falls behind on his payments and his heart is ordered to be reclaimed. The movie doesn't do a very good job establishing why the company can just go out and hack people up, or why nobody seems interested in stopping them when they are. I guess the audience is just supposed to assume the corporation controls everything. With the high body count that Law and Whittaker rack up, just in the first half hour, it's a wonder that anyone is left alive at all, nobody seems to be paying for their organs. The public at large seems to be oblivious to this fact because all it takes is a few soothing words from the sales rep and they all sign on the dotted line. The big problem with Repo Men is that it simply isn't very believable and the movie makes very little effort to make it so.

I recently saw Repossession Mambo at a screening and was duly impressed. As a fan of sci-fi, I thought it had great action set pieces and imagined a cool alternate future. Who knew that Jude Law could be so physical? (And let me say, I thought the lack of singing was a bonus). Perhaps more than anything I appreciated the LOOK of the film and was pleasantly surprised by its sense of humor! Despite the dark nature of the material there were laugh out loud moments of ironic humor. It was another layer that made me appreciate the movie all the more. For that I credit the director. The ability to think outside the box and create a unique viewing experience is all too rare nowadays and Repossession Mambo accomplishes that. It's the kind of movie that when I walked out, I was still thinking about it. Maybe not everyone will love it as much as me, but it's the kind of thing everyone should see. It's a conversation starter. Decide for yourself!

I first saw this one when it was released in the cinema. I quite liked it and thought it worthy of a second viewing when it came up on TV this week. Quite futuristic with certain visuals that are very reminiscent of Ridley Scott's 1982 classic, Blade Runner, although it's nothing like Blade Runner (unfortunately). Here is a brief summary before I give you my thoughts on the film (summary haters and those that don't wish to know anything about the plot please reclaim that man's pancreas while I write the next paragraph). It is the near future where medicine has advanced enough that human organs can be replaced with artificial ones. One company 'The Union' controls the world market and as such can dictate the price. It is so high that most people opt to pay in instalments. But if you miss three payments then the Repo Men will call and surgically remove The Union's property. Remy and Jake grew up together, they joined the army together and when the war was over they became Repo Men together. Their boss is Frank, who is only concerned with the retrieval of The Union's property, no matter how it's done. Remy is married to Carol and has a son, Peter but Jake stayed single. Carol doesn't like Remy's line of work and wants him to move into sales. The two guys carry on with their work, which eventually becomes too much for Carol and she leaves Remy. Soon after Remy suffers an accident that leads to him having an artificial heart installed. He now gets a conscience and finds it hard to get back into the Repo business. He tries sales, but that's not for him. Eventually he falls behind on his payments and becomes overdue. He goes off the grid and goes to live rough with others whose repayments have lapsed. There he meets Beth, a singer who has had many illegal artificial organs fitted. The pair decides to try and get their records erased when Jake is assigned to recover Remy's organs. I won't say any more, don't want to give too much away. It's a pretty well made film although there is a lot of violence and it is very gory, not recommended for those of a nervous disposition. Decent performances from all of the leading cast, honourable mentions go to Jude Law as Remy, Forest Whitaker as Jake, Alice Braga as Beth, Liev Schreiber excellent as the very slimy Frank, Carice van Houten as Carol and Chandler Canterbury as Peter. I pretty much enjoyed this film but I found it didn't quite hit the mark. There is a very nice twist at the end which I did enjoy, but over all it kind of left me a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it's quite entertaining and there are some good performances, I just felt the plot could have done with a little more refining. So, over all, violent, gory, futuristic, entertaining but the plot needed a little work. Having said that, it's still recommended. My score: 6.3/10