Repo Men – I want to repossess my lost evening, dammit

Earlier this week I caught a preview screening of Jude Law’s latest film, the sci-fi thriller Repo-Men. Before anyone gets excited, this is NOT anything to do with Alex Cox’ cult classic “Repo Man”. More’s the pity…

Jude Law plays Remy, a character so staggeringly bland that I couldn’t remember his name at any point in the film. It’s not a good sign is it? Remy is a Repo Man for The Union, a large corporation dealing in artificial organs and bodyparts at extortionate APR. When patients default on their repayments, a Repo Man is sent to reclaim the items.

Herein lies the first of many problems with the film. These repo men can apparently LEGALLY tazer you, cut you open, rip out whatever they’ve come for, and leave you lying there bleeding out in shock and probably dying due to lack of a heart/lung/liver etc.

Remy works with Jake, an old school friend who also served in the army with him. Much time is spent on building their brotherly friendship and how they’d do anything for each other. Jake is worried that Remy’s wife is convincing him to quit, thereby breaking up their long-standing partnership. When doing a seemingly routine heart reclaim, Remy is involved in an accident with a defib unit and knocked out. Coming to in hospital, he finds he now requires an artificial heart. Sadly The Union don’t do employee discounts and Remy soon finds his debt spiralling out of control as he develops a conscience regarding the job and can’t earn enough commission to maintain his pay packet. His wife kicks him out in disgust at his job and he moves in with Jake. He receives final demand notices from the Union and discusses it with Jake who suggests they go on a trawl through a ghetto, looking for more overdue organ recipients. Remy tries, and fails, to repo a liver and realises he can no longer take part in corporate-sanctioned murder.

Choosing to go on the run and escape his imminent demise; Logan, sorry REMY, enters into society’s underbelly of lost and disenfranchised. He saves a drug user, Beth, he recognises from a club earlier in the film (for some reason, I wasn’t quite clear on why, maybe she was supposed to represent his redemption) and together they decide to find a way to clear their accounts with the Union. Apparently in this dystopian future no-one’s heard off offsite back-ups and all the Union’s records are stored on one computer in their head office. Yes, I know I work in IT and know about things like off-site back-ups but even the most technophobic luddites have a vague knowledge about the concept of back-ups these days! See if you can guess which Repo Man gets sent to reclaim Remy’s heart. Go on, guess.

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, a relatively unknown director who has previously worked on storyboards for “Trainspotting” and “A Life Less Ordinary” this doesn’t bode well for any future projects he helms. Sadly, he appears to have learnt little from working with Danny Boyle and crafted a ludicrous, tonally yo-yo-ing mess, from which I felt there was no escape. Maybe this was deliberately post-modern and I was supposed to feel as trapped by the film as Jude Law’s character is by the system he previously worked in. Maybe it was just plain bad.

Ok, so where to begin? Well the premise is a little off, given the fact that these Repo Men are killers, once you look at it clearly, they are killing people and getting away with it. No explanation, that’s just the way it is. Never quite finding its’ mood, “Repo Men” swings between black comedy and dystopian sci-fi, but veers so wildly, that the two tones feel incongruous together. One or other needed to be toned down so the mood didn’t swing so extremely.

Then there’s the setting: The city is seemingly stolen wholesale from “Blade Runner” (Ridley’s going to be on the phone about this...) but the suburb Remy lives in appears to be Wisteria Lane. Somehow there is also a slum area that looks like a northern England sink estate. This area is known to the Union and their agents, yet is full to overflowing with debtors. One afternoon with some canisters of knock-out gas and a scalpel and it’s problem solved, surely?

The final big fight sequence is lifted almost wholesale from “Oldboy” (Park Chan-Wook’s on call-waiting while Ridley Scott’s on the other line...) and when Remy picks up a hammer, he all but winks to say “No, it’s not a rip-off, look: Hammer! It’s an homage now...”

There is a swerve towards the end of the film, but if you’ve paid any attention, you’ll have clocked it in advance. This is not a subtle film.

Jude Law simply can’t carry a film as a lead actor. He was surprisingly good in Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” as Dr Watson and in “The Talented Mr Ripley” but reliable supporting role seems to be the zenith of his ability. The opening voiceover where he describes the theory of Schrodinger’s Cat is supposed to reflect the dilemma of the film I think, but comes across as just plain daft.

Liev Schreiber and Forest Whittaker are good actors, they should know better than to be in something this poorly conceived. Admittedly Liev is the only one of the two who performs adequately, Forest seems like he’s not taking it seriously and phoning in his performance. Liev’s corporate asshole character schmoozes his way through every scene, showing the clients an acceptable empathetic face, while simultaneously telling his guys to get out there and reclaim some organs to meet quota.

The soundtrack is painfully out of place and jarringly so. At the film’s climax (appropriate term given the style of the scene) Remy and Beth try and scan all of their upgrades back into the Union system so it thinks they have been reclaimed and returned. Cue slow strip, arching backs, gasps and the kind of music you’d expect to hear on Channel 5 after midnight. Enjoy the moment where she deep throats the scanner so he can get the barcode on her artificial voicebox. Yes, it really is THAT unsubtle.

The dialogue is the finest roquefort compounded by a large helping of acting jambon. The movie is a Croque Monsieur of wasted opportunity. A nice concept flawed by poor direction and an schizophrenic tone.