Repo Men is based on the novel The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia.  Although the novel was not published until 2009, work on the screenplay had actually begun as far back as 2003.  The final script by Garcia and Garrett Lerner makes it to the big screen less than a year after the book’s release with a couple of movie stars and a first-time feature director.  The result is a movie that had me changing my opinion about it multiple times throughout.

The plot is reminiscent of Spielberg’s Minority Report, featuring a kind of hunter who suddenly finds himself as the hunted.  The hunter here is Jude Law’s Remy.  He’s a repo man in a future civilization where manufactured human organs are commonplace.  Do you see where this is headed?  Yes, if the recipient of an artificial organ falls behind on payments, and Remy shows up to reclaim his company’s property.  The repossessee is offered the option of an ambulance, but there’s really no point.

Remy becomes the hunted when an incident on the job leaves him in need of a new heart.  Apparently his company doesn’t offer a health plan good enough to cover their own products and Remy’s partner Jake soon finds his friend’s name on his checklist.  Remy goes on the run, aided by the many other people who have gone underground to stay alive—can anybody pay their bills?  With the help of the beautiful Beth, Remy ultimately decides to bite the hand that used to feed him and clear everyone with an overdue bill.

The beginning of Repo Men really sucked me in.  It was slick, cool and fun.  Law and co-star Forest Whitaker have a surprisingly good level of chemistry and the movie really gets you wanting to know where it is headed.  That’s where the movie seemed to hit a bit of a lull.  As previously mentioned, the plot is very similar to Minority Report and others.  There are a few cool, humorous touches like a surprisingly young black-market surgeon, but for the most part the middle is fairly standard and predictable.

Suddenly, the movie starts moving in a new direction: cheesy.  Remy heads for the company’s home office in search of the “pink door,” behind which lies the central hub computer where the repossessed organs are returned and catalogued.  In an over-the-top action sequence, Remy becomes a cross between Rambo and that guy from Oldboy, slicing his way through an army of suits protecting the door.  It’s fun, but as hokey as they come.  I had just written the movie off as a cheesy exercise when it took another turn, providing something of an explanation for the cheesiness.

After all this, I walked out of the theater with a kind of whiplash, not quite sure of how I felt about what I just saw.  The ending could be seen as a cheat, but even so, it made sense of what went on before it.  It also was quite unexpected, thus negating much of the film’s predictable mid-section.

The bottom line is that this movie succeeded in having me interested in the beginning, the end, and even for a time after I left the theater, as I pondered the film from a different perspective having been somewhat surprised by the ending.  Anyone who dislikes gratuitous violence will like the movie less and less as it goes on, but for those who can put up with it, Repo Men has cool enough leads and enough interesting things going on to maintain your interest and keep you entertained.

Repo Men is rated R for “strong bloody violence, grisly images, language and some sexuality/nudity.”  There is some gratuitous violence that just gets bloodier and bloodier as the film goes along.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Repo Men.