Skip to main contentThis squelchy actioner wasn't screened by WW press deadlines, but no matter: In the future, there are no newspapers, and Jude Law cuts out your lungs. These developments are probably connected.
Repo Men
WW Critic's Score: 43
A part of me wants to praise this slick little number, about collections agents reclaiming human organs, for following its daft and gruesome premise to the furthest extremes. Oh, but it's a very small part of me—like my gallbladder, say, or my big toe. I still have my own eyes, thank you, and I can spot a forgery when I see it. Repo Men is pleading for the compliment of being called a knockoff of Spielberg's A.I. or Scott's Blade Runner—but it's actually a cheap, grotesque imitation of Hecht's The Front Page, though with no lines as clever as "That son of a bitch stole my kidney!"
It's a strange time for studio filmmaking when the titles of a weekend's two big releases are interchangeable, but here we are: Repo Men could be called The Bounty Hunter without any violence to its themes. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are scalpels-for-hire at a Tomorrowland corporation that loans out biomechanical body parts (gleaming metal livers and onions) from offices that have the faux-friendly lobbies of suburban bank branches, complete with a foam mascot named Larry the Lung. Here, cancerous and cadaverous clients are told they can "get more you out of you" by borrowing organs at a "standard APR of 19.6 percent." When they can't pay the monthly premiums, Law and Whitaker come to the door with stun guns and carving knives. Now this is predatory lending! It's also the first time since The Merchant of Venice that usurers have been depicted claiming a literal pound of flesh. If you worry that our fantasies of the future come spring-loaded with the calumnies of the past, obviously you're not getting into the spirit of the thing.
But then Repo Men doesn't know quite what spirit it wants to be taken in. Its satirical tone lacks commitment: The Thomas-Hobbes-shops-at-Walmart vision is too bleak to be entirely convincing, and yet never bleak enough to relish. The movie needs a Kubrick to throw his weight behind the misanthropy. As it stands, only Whitaker seems to enjoy playing an amoral mercenary with an appetite for vivisection—Law seems ashamed (and plastic, though whether this makeup is a result of artistry or egotism is uncertain). Worse, director Miguel Sapochnik keeps apologizing for him, making sure we understand that this character is not irredeemable, that he deserves to fight for his life when the tables are turned. I'm sorry, but once you've ripped open one human abdomen to collect a debt, you're beyond absolution, and you might as well embrace your circumstances. I don't especially want to watch a movie about a payday-loan serial killer, but I especially don't want to watch a movie about a payday-loan serial killer who gets all emo about it.
Repo Men somehow manages to get both more and less offensive as it steams ahead. Its violence is more exaggerated and its gotta-get-out-of-this-sordid-business hypocrisy more pronounced, but it is also increasingly difficult to take seriously: It actually contains a scene where invasive surgery is used as foreplay. Getting angry about this claptrap is a waste of time. It doesn't deserve your spleen. Or your money. R. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
WWeek 2015