REPO MEN
US, 2010, 111 minutes, Colour.
Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga, Liev Schreiber, Carice Van Houten, Chandler Canterbury.
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik.
Ugly story. Ugly treatment.
One of the ugliest of contemporary criminal activities is that of trading in body parts. There are frequent headlines about men and women from poorer countries being exploited for body parts for transplants for wealthy clients. Dirty Pretty Things was a 2002 drama on this theme set in London. One of the Kenneth Branagh Wallander films concerned this kind of exploitation in Africa.
However, Repo Men is rather different. This time, in the near future (looking a touch like the world of Blade Runner or I, Robot), a company called The Union supplies transplants but charges exorbitant fees and, like many banks, is demanding when it comes to re-payments. Payment failures mean that The Union reclaims the parts and sends out its staff of repo men who stun the subject and then, with surgical precision but rather unsurgically remove the part (all checked with computer information concerning failure to repay as well as indications for the correct location of the part). Since one of these 'operations' is shown near the beginning of the film, potential audiences will be able to gauge whether this is the kind of incision-excisions scene they want to watch.
The message is fairly clear. The Union represents all those heartless (not exactly, they do supply hearts here) corporations who are merciless in getting their capital back. The message is also clear on the double standards that the repo officials can use in their own lives. They track down victims relentlessly and then can go home to wife, child and barbecues with friends.
The two repo men here are played by Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, serious actors, and one wonders what it was that appealed to them about this project and why they consented to be in it. They give of their best, especially Jude Law, who has to undergo a change of heart (both literally and emotionally). Liev Schreiber is the smooth-talking conscienceless manager of The Union.
Not that there aren't some effective sequences, for instance the fugitives suddenly entering a vast white room where masked assemblers all dressed in white are at their desks. But, soon after this there is a massacre of personnel in a corridor which looks as if the film-makers had overdosed on Kill Bill Volume 1. Taking a cue from a fellow reviewer: this is grim repo.
1. The genre of the film: science fiction, future, horror?
2. The core idea, the issue of body parts and trade, exploitation? Finances?
3. The future look of the film, Metropolis, Blade Runner, the buildings, lights, hoardings, the offices and labs, ordinary homes? The underground and squalor? The refuge of those escaping The Union? The credibility of the plot? The score?
4. The tone: the opening, the pursuit, the targets, their being stunned, the incisions, the parts taken out, the computer verifying the location of the parts? The victims and their plea?
5. Remy, his skill at his work, justification, friendship with Jake, from schooldays (and the flashbacks)? Working together, their jokes and antics in the office, their reputations, with Frank, his reprimanding them? Remy at home, ordinary lifestyle, his relationship with his wife, his son? His wife urging him to change to sales? The contrast of his ordinary life and relationships with his hard and callous attitude in his job? The justification of just doing the job? It’s only a job?
6. Frank, management, heartless, the accounts, statistics, sales, the need for parts, the interviews with the clients, the glossy brochures and advertising? His spiel about owing this to oneself and to others? The people working for him? Pay? The clients and their contracts? The role of The Union?
7. The barbeque. Family life, the wife and her antagonism towards Jake, the phone call, the emergency, Jake persuading Remy to follow through? The operation at the front gate, the wife and her reaction?
8. The hunting down of the refugees, their hiding, the massacre and the pursuit?
9. Jake and Remy, going to the bar, the singer?
10. Remy and his dilemmas, the machine not working properly, the accident, his being unconscious, his explanation of the three times that he was unconscious? The effect, in hospital, the substitute heart, his being in debt? Jake being behind this accident?
11. Remy, the new heart, the recovery? His wife and son leaving? The meetings with the wife, wanting to meet his son? At the train, the message for his son to deliver, the wife’s collapse? The difficulties in recovery? Jobs, payments? His being on the job, his hesitation, his hand not steady, the consequences?
12. The confrontation with Frank, Jake and his stance against Remy? Remy becoming an outlaw?
13. Remy, the family, encountering the girl, her addiction, her many body parts, his helping her to recover? Her accompanying him on the mission?
14. Remy, a sense of mission, against The Union? Remy on the computer and his falling behind in repayments? The escape, eluding the pursuers?
15. The decision to go to The Rebels, with the help of Beth? Beth and her character, support, her own health? The pursuit through the buildings, trying to find the computers, the white office with the assemblers? The corridor, the executives, the massacre, the weapons, martial arts? How well did this fit in with the rest of the film? Going to the computers, getting the records, wanting to expunge their records, the knife, having to sacrifice themselves, open themselves up, locate the parts, surrender them? Frank and his arrival, confronting Remy? The fight, Frank’s death?
16. Remy, going abroad, to the hot temperatures, the beach, with Alice, with Jake? His dreams?
17. The reality, this all happening in Remy’s imagination – or his being fed with these images? Frank and Jake and their care for Remy, his being virtually brain dead except for his imagination?
18. The action and thrills, the horror touches blending with the metaphor of The Union being an image for rapacious banks in the globalised world?
