Saturday, August 7, 2010

Repo Men

A while back there was a film called "Repo: The Genetic Opera." In it the plot revolved around artificial organs and what happened when you fell behind in your payments. It was the rare film that tried to be a cult film and suceeded in some small way. It is one of the few films that could promise a singing Paris Hilton without one walking away in disgust. "Repo Men" takes the same plot point and dulls it up a bit and makes it hollywood.

Here we have Jude Law proclaiming that he's both living and dead. He also blandly goes about his work ripping organs out of other people's chest. Now we have a problem here twice over. It's hard enough to start a film with a character dead inside, but its doubly hard given that he's basically a casual killer with no remorse. Given the level of writer here the film would have been an automatic fail here if not for the charasmatic actor. Basically, I was thinking to myself.. "Ok, I'll give them a bit more rope and see what they hang."

It helps that his pal is Forest Whittaker who I'd watch read the phone book, not read aloud mind you, just reading it. He's that good. Their boss is appropriate slimey and so there's promise. Promise that the film basically just wees down its leg like a diabetic little purse dog. Our hero gets shocked and gets a new heart and suddenly grows a conscience. Oh, NOW it's wrong. He decides to protect a girl with more extra parts than the three boobied hooker in "Total Recall," so all the other repo men are gunning for him and...

.. oh crap my hand went asleep just writing that.

Look, it's not a bad film, it's a bland film. You want some exciting repo men action, then go rent the original RepoMan, or for weirdness Repo: the Genetic Opera. Have fun!

2 comments:

  1. Have not viewed the newer one with Jude and Forest (I agree, he's wonderful, check him in Ripple Effect, Way of the Samurai), as I had heard it's depressing. With this, I won't renew any effort to watch it.
    The operatic version was wonderfully strange and though it's the same basis, very watchable and entertaining...

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