Repo Man

Universal

R4 DVD

Repo Man is a dark dystopic view of the future. Medicine is in the hands of big corporations and the public hospitals offer little by the way of care. Technology has made the great leap forward and is able to produce all manner of physical replacements from heart to liver, from the nervous system to the kidneys. At the same life modern man’s obsession with life at all cost has increased at a fevered pace. Rather than accepting the dignity of death, the ill agree to purchase organs at exorbitant prices with interest increasing every year.

If you do not keep up with your payments you are given a 90 days grace period and then the said organ is repossessed. Jude Law (Remy) is one of the best Repo Men, he enjoys he work and stuns, carves, slashes and repossesses without a second thought. His partner is Jake (Forest Whitaker) who he has known since college and went through the military with. Remy and Jake are inseparable and this causes constant problems between Remy and his wife. It seems she wants a normal life in the suburbs and cannot accept that perhaps this is who Remy is. After an incident at a party at home when Remy and Jake repossess a kidney right in front of the house, she leaves with their son.

As Remy debates what to do with his future, a Defibrillator malfunctions and he needs a heart transplant. With a new model heart in his chest he finds it difficult to continue working as a Repo Man and falls behind with his payments. Soon he is on the wanted list and must work out a way to escape.

This is a film packed with stars Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber among others. It has excellent cinematography and creates quite a unique mood, a sort of cross between science fiction and film noir. The score is impressive using all manner of jazz and cabaret to add to the sleazy noir style.

There is good character development especially with the “buddy” theme between Remy and Jake. The family melodrama which envelopes Jake is a bit annoying. I must admit when the kid tasered his mum to stop her whining I thought it was a good move.

While this is primarily an action film, and the violence comes quick and fast, it does explore many intriguing themes. What are the ethics of big business being involved with medicine ? Even today there are debates about businesses buying patents to DNA sequences. What happens where life and death decisions are in the hands of bankers rather than doctors. On the other hand, for me at least, a further question arose. That is about our obsession with life at all costs. For people to be exploited by unscrupulous big businesses selling replacements organs we need to be unwilling to accept life and death as it is i.e. to die with dignity. This is the exact reason today so many people flock to supposed cancer cures and quite patently ludicrous treatment when faced with death. While I have contempt for big business exploiting the vulnerable I also remember P.T. Barnum’s famous quote “There's a sucker born every minute”.

Repo Man does not offer a happy ending, the ending is confronting and powerful. It reminds me a lot of the climatic scenes in Brazil. While Repo Man has clearly been influenced by Blade Runner, Brazil and films of similar ilk it is a unique tale in its own right and in no way derivative.

I greatly enjoy science fiction and this is certainly one of the better Sci Fi films I have seen in 2010.

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