Sometimes, I wonder what movie characters wanted to be when they grew up. I wonder what character like Jude Law’s Remy in the new action film, REPO MEN, wanted to be before he was hired by a futuristic organ-shilling corporation as a repo man once those who take those synthetic organs can’t make their monthly payments. Judging by the finesse with which Remy slices open stomachs and cuts through sinew, surgery wasn’t on his maturing curriculum.
I also wonder what REPO MEN, as a whole, wanted to be. Did it have aspirations of being a grand old actioner full of high-speed chases, massive explosions, and fast fight scenes? Did it have dreams of being a satirical comedy that made broad statements about the health care industry without really delving into too much minutia? Did really want to be a film that seems to be a Frankenstein monster of so many other, and much better, films? Well, if REPO MEN had any of those lifelong dreams, it can pat itself on its stitched up back, because it succeeds. It succeeds in trying to be all of these things without much clear direction and absolutely no finesse whatsoever. Kind of like Remy slicing away at victims borrowers.
The real trouble with REPO MEN rears its ugly head early on, when it is clear that structure, under the directorial tutelage of first timer, Miguel Sapochnik, is not something the film even wishes to attain. We understand the future world we are thrust into. A mega corporation loans out internal organs. Once someone hits a certain point of being “past due,” a repo man is sent out to collect said internal organ, whether that means slaughtering someone in broad public or behind grimy, poverty-stricken walls. We understand what Remy, as well as his best friend, Jake, played with intense affability (yes, that is possible) by Forest Whitaker, does for a living.
Unfortunately, the real gist of the film, the moment where Remy has an artificial heart thrust upon him and can’t make his own payments, doesn’t come until we should be well immersed into this world. We never really are, though. Throughout much of the film, the setting feels present, and no amount of CGed cityscapes with BLADE RUNNER-esque, video billboards can convince us otherwise. The acts the main characters go about as their daily routine never feel sincere, almost like two actors pretending to be repo men who collect body parts. Wonder why that is.
In fact, nothing about REPO MEN ever feels genuine. Not the relationship Remy builds with a woman, played by Alice Braga, who is hiding underground with dozens of her own implants. Not the relationship and inevitable face-off between Remy and Jake. Likable as Law and Whitaker are in their own right, there is no, real connection between these two, and when that face-off finally takes place, there is zero emotional weight carried with it. As impressive as said fight scene is, and, make no bones about it, there is some impressive fighting action in REPO MEN, particularly from Law and Whitaker, you can’t help but think how much deeper it could have played out with a little more meaningful connection built up.
REPO MEN doesn’t seem too concerned with these connections, though, connections that could have and should have elicit a more meaningful snap once they are severed. Instead, we are subjected to various scenes thrown about here and there each of which seem to be lifted directly from other films. Besides the obvious ripoffs (and let’s just go ahead and call these ripoffs, shall we? If you consider what REPO MEN is doing half the time as homage, you are either not paying close enough attention, or you’re giving Sapochnik and crew far too much credit.), there are countless little moments here and there that might have worked were they original in any way, shape, or form. By the time Remy decides to take on a dozen guys while working his way down a long hallway, (and, yes, he does pull out a hammer at one point) you’ve given up trying to count the acts of thievery and just enjoy. That scene, by the way, is quite enjoyable if you are able to work your way past the fact that it’s never as cool as it was in OLDBOY.
It doesn’t do absolutely nothing right. It almost makes the aspects it gets wrong even harder to take. There was a nugget of an original idea in REPO MEN, and there were hundreds of different directions the people behind could have gone. There is, also, some very interesting to outright good trimmings here and there. The idea of a 9-year-old surgeon is fresh and executed thoroughly well here. The film has a rather surprising ending, both in terms of story and in the final thoughts the film makers wanted to leave the audience with. Some of the more visceral, surgical scenes could play as genuine homages to certain works of Cronenberg. Jude Law, sleep walking, as he appears to be, through this performance, is still just as charismatic as ever. These are the things REPO MEN does absolutely right. It’s just a shame all of this fancy window dressing couldn’t have been used to pull us further into a more compelling store.
To call REPO MEN a mess might be putting it a bit harshly. It’s not an outright train wreck of a film. It simply doesn’t know what it wants to be, and every turn it takes, every style of film making or genre it believes it may want to pursue, seems to be cut off at the knees long before any story can be established in that direction. The heart of the film, much like that of its lead character, is patently artificial and no one involved can keep it from being messily cut out.
