Repo Men ‘s Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are perfectly capable actors but here’s the brutal truth: In this organ-swiping thriller, the most compelling moments belong to liver, kidney and spleen.
Set in a near-future, Tokyo-meets-New Jersey urbanscape crowded with JumboTrons, monorails, skyscrapers and shantytowns, the R-rated Repo Men, which opens Friday, blasts off with a brilliant premise worthy of a Philip K. Dick short story.
Sick people buy GPS-enabled artificial organs on an installment plan from a corporation called The Union. When a customer falls behind on payments, Union employees Remy (Law) and Jake (Whitaker) track the laggard down, perform crude surgery without anesthetic, reach into the poor bastard’s body and repossess the overdue “artiforg.”
Based on The Repossession Mambo novel by script co-writer Eric Garcia, this setup drives a succession of icky thrills, dramatized with conviction by a bulked-up Law. The British actor, who was nominated for Oscars for Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley, clearly took this action role seriously, getting into thickly muscled shape with help from the same people who trained the cast of 300.
Though Law looks the part physically, his character’s grisly extractions are so outlandish you’d expect a dash of gallows humor to leaven the sadism. Instead, these repo men demonstrate little in the way of dark wit.
Whitaker’s company-man character seems consumed with misguided notions of loyalty. Liev Schrieber plays Remy’s corporate overseer with used-car-salesman smarm but lacks the stinging one-liners that distinguish the juiciest movie villains.
The primary injections of satirical tone come not from the generally generic dialogue but from feel-good pop songs that counterpoint the on-screen butchery.
Meanwhile, Law’s earnest portrait grows tiresome, as does the dreary domestic conflict between Remy and his grim wife Carol (Carice Van Houten). For the sake of their son, Carol wants Remy to find a more wholesome day job. In the thankless role, Van Houten, spectacular in the Dutch thriller Black Book, comes across as a one-dimensional shrew.
Enter the lovely Brazilian actress Alice Braga, who plays a drug-addicted nightclub singer made up almost entirely of spare parts.
Even with Braga on board, Repo Men sags. But fortunately, British director Miguel Sapochnik jacks up the pace with a startling vision of big business biotech animated by the best fight scene of the year and a seriously twisted sex ‘n’ surgery sequence.
Repo Men Images courtesy Universal Pictures." title="repo-men-2shot-660" width="660" height="440" class="size-full wp-image-32054"> Jude Law, left, and Forest Whitaker play Remy and Jake in Repo Men.
Images courtesy Universal PicturesSpochnik, making his first feature on the strength of a 15-minute short film called The Dreamer, knits together a largely convincing alt-world with help from production designer David Sandefur ( Minority Report), cinematographer Enrique Chediak ( 28 Weeks Later) and special makeup effects expert Andrew Clement, who designed a convincing array of replacement innards.
Overcoming a rote middle section during which Law finally gets the inevitable wake-up call to do the right thing, Repo Men succeeds as a stylish exercise in mayhem. Moral of the story for working stiffs neck-deep in the Depressed Economy zeitgeist? When it comes to predatory corporate practices, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
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WIRED Provocative premise powers cheap thrills and one stunning knife fight..
TIRED Mundane relationships and fuzzy motivation mar a sluggish second act.
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