Repo Men |
  • USA / Canada • 2010 • 111m •    • Directed by: Miguel Sapochnik. • Starring: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga, Liev Schreiber, Carice van Houten, Chandler Canterbury, Joe Pingue, Liza Lapira, Tiffany Espensen, Yvette Nicole Brown, RZA, Wayne Ward, Tanya Clarke. • Music by: Marco Beltrami.      In the future humans have extended and improved our lives through highly sophisticated and expensive mechanical organs created by a company called ''The Union''. The dark side of these medical breakthroughs is that if you don't pay your bill, ''The Union'' sends its highly skilled repo men to take back its property... with no concern for your comfort or survival. Former soldier Remy is one of the best organ repo men in the business. But when he suffers a cardiac failure on the job, he awakens to find himself fitted with the company's top-of-the-line heart-replacement... as well as a hefty debt. But a side effect of the procedure is that his heart's no longer in the job. When he can't make the payments, The Union sends its toughest enforcer, Remy's former partner Jake, to track him down.
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The fine print though reads that a default in payment beyond 90 days means The Union (the shady corporation in question here) will send their repossession team after you to reclaim the part. And yes, if it's something crucial for survival, that's just tough luck because like banks, they don't really care if they have to throw you out on the streets. It's purely business and nothing personal, though in this case it involves life and death.
Jude Law plays Remy, one of the best of the best in the business as an employee of The Union in its Repo department, perfecting his skills of breaking and entering, fights, and generally overpowering and immobilizing his victim long enough for him to exercise his surgical skills. He has no remorse to do what he's doing as a career, although his long and irregular hours is taking a toil on his family life, with wife Carol (Carice van Houten from Valkyrie and Black Book) giving him that ultimatum to do a sales job, just like what his boss Frank (Liev Schreiber) has made it his calling to convince those who are sick to sign on with the company's scheme to provide medical and financial assistance.
Law has now starred in two of what I personally deem as some of the best science fiction stories Hollywood has done, this and Gattaca which coincidentally also deals with genetics and such. His turn in Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence is something forgettable, and amongst the three I prefer his role here best, since it offers him a wide range of emotions to showcase, plus to balance that off with some hard hitting action, which was missed in Gattaca since his character in that film was wheelchair bound, though no lacking in emotional intensity.
Repo Men primarily follows Remy's story arc, where we see a transformation in a man in his attitude and conscience once he's made to belong to the other side, not by choice. After all, why bat for a losing team? An accident during work meant that The Union feels obliged to save one of their own, after all he's the best, though with no worker benefits, meaning that Remy too is subjected to the same terms and conditions as those whom he hunts down. It's a tale of losing a physical heart to gain a compassionate one, and he soon finds himself dangerously close to not bringing home the bacon because of his natural affiliation, that his defaulting of payments meant his best friend and buddy in the business, Jake (played by Forest Whitaker) has to systematically hunt him down.
Filled with plenty of violence without remorse, gore, and what I thought was gore-porn with that state of sensuousness and extreme pain experienced by both Remy and his new squeeze Beth (Alice Braga) in a scene that will really raise some eyebrows as they go to the extreme in wanting their freedom back, there are plenty of action sequences here that will thrill that action fanboy in you. And if you think V for Vendetta's fight scene at the end with V utilizing his knife to dispatch opponents was one of a kind, well, you ain't see nothing yet with a similar sequence here executed by Remy, which I think is the best amongst all the other fights crafted for the movie, hands down, made all the more sweet when set against UNKLE's Burn My Shadow song. This scene alone will make you sit up and take notice that Jude Law can be that drama king turned action hero too.
And let's not forget the other supporting cast that equally boosted the film through their fine delivery. Forest Whitaker shedded a lot of weight for his role here to act as that counter- balance to Jude Law, and carries the film with his witty one liners (that seemed to be ad- libbed) and comical demeanour, though he's no pushover when it comes to the crunch. Alice Braga continues to be a comfortable casting choice in action films (just as she was in the recent Predators) and her romantic subplot with Remy grows to culminate in that unbelievable scene I mentioned before. I think we got to keep our eyes peeled if filmmakers see her as the new Linda Hamilton able to take on more masculine roles in future, because I think she has what it takes to deliver such tough-as-nails roles quite effortlessly.
Unlike the schmuck in the show who will pitch that you owe it your family, I'd just say you owe it to yourself to catch this science-fiction action thriller for adults with a great story backed by unflinching, violent action, with enough twists and turns to surprise you. With certainty Repo Men enters my shortlist as one of the best the genre has to offer, and is this year's equivalent of Children of Men! Highly recommended!
Review by DICK STEEL from the Internet Movie Database.
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