(Universal Home Video sadly couldn't supply us with a Blu-ray copy so we could only review the DVD - however - there's still a week left in our Repo Men Blu-ray comp, so make sure you get your entries in!)Repo Men is based around a pretty fun idea: in the future theres a high demand for organs but few donors, so people rely on expensive, metallic (how heavy these things are to lug about in your abdomen, I dunno), replacements known as forgs. Forg may be an acronym. I neither know nor care.
Jude Law and
Forest Whitaker play, as the title suggests, repo men: if you dont make your payments, they are hired to come and retrieve the pseudo-organ through the quickest possible means (a machete will do the job). Whether this is an original idea is somewhat disputed as its remarkably close to the concept behind
Repo: The Genetic Opera but as both movies were developing at the same time, it's like trying to decipher what came first out of the chicken and the egg. But while that movie seems actually to aspire to cult obscurity, here is far more mainstream fair, played for fun and laughs, but with intelligence and a heart. Or thats what this one is aspiring towards anyway; ultimately it falls between two stools and is too derivative, and predictable, to fulfil what potential it does have. But its one of those movies that just works better on DVD or TV (it was a flop in the cinema); you forgive it more, and enjoy what it does have to offer.
It opens, and continues, with a somewhat unnecessary voiceover by Jude Law, who seems to be trying so hard to break beyond his image an image, by the way, that most guys would be fairly happy with that the movie opens with him cheerfully cutting into someone. Although he is ultimately the movies (anti-)hero, his character is most reminiscent perhaps of the one he played in
Road to Perdition; his hairline here is doing the Full Nicholson. He is aiming for the DiCaprio route, but not quite choosing his projects wisely enough. Something Happens and, wouldnt you just know it, Remy, Laws character, ends up needing a forg of his own. And, irony of ironies, when he cant make the payments, his old partner, Jake (Forest Whitaker) gets assigned to find him and repossess his new heart. Whitaker has the movies most thankless role, and it is beneath his talents. Its beneath Laws, but at least he gets to do all the fun scenes. Another problem with the picture is that once Remy has his own forg, he can no longer in good conscience do repo missions. But where did this guy get a conscience? His character was more enjoyable without one. He still gets to do a fair bit of kicking and punching and whatnot, particularly in one scene that is an homage (polite word for it) of the corridor fight scene in OldBoy, but without the single-take innovation.
So thats why the movie, ultimately, doesnt work, but its such a weird mismatch that its enjoyable despite itself. Its a lot more grizzly than I was anticipating, filled as it is with close-ups of impromptu surgery. If youre queasy about that kind of thing then this isnt the movie for you. Theres a scene towards the end that can only be described as an erotic surgery scene, and its so bizarre its almost worth watching the movie for; if
David Cronenberg were making a mainstream erotic thriller it might look something like that.
Liev Schrieber has fun as the nasty head of the forg-corporation (they had a name, Im sure, but its already gone); theres a vague satire of the American health service somewhere in there. Its a movie that flits between ambitious sci-fi and trash, and doesnt comfortably fit into either category. But then where else are you going to find Jude Law arm-deep in a sexy womans abdominal cavity?
DISC:
Theres some (rightly) deleted scenes (the DVD runs longer than the cinema release, with more close-ups of wounds and whatnot, if you like that kinda thing), as well as a fairly light-hearted commentary and a special effects featurette for people who dont understand the concept of green screen. The only smile any of these raised was in the deleted scene where Remy is, appropriately enough, watching the liver transplant scene from Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life.