 Healthcare With An Inhuman Touch |
| Review Date: March 31, 2010 |
| Reviewer: B. Merritt, WWW.FILMREVIEWSTEW.COM, Pacific Grove, California United States |
Being summarily clobbered by movie-goers and critics alike, REPO MEN will obviously not be for everyone. But it will be a great movie for the right person, and I was obviously one of those "right" people.
So who is this movie directed at and why? Well, it's a combination of a smart espionage thriller in a science fiction setting, with a little comedy thrown in for good measure. This might sound like a recipe for disaster, but it is anything but. But is it right for you? That's a tough call. If you're in the medical field and are concerned about healthcare insurance, it will definitely pique your interest. If you enjoyed such films as Kill Bill and Bringing Out the Dead, this will be right up your alley.
So why did I rate the film so high? Let's look at it for a minute...
It's topical without being "in your face." It never tells you to believe that private insurance carriers are "bad" and simply shows us a ridiculous possible future where organs are built in factories and everyone who needs a pancreas, a liver, an ear, or whatever, can get one ...for a price. The Union is run by an unscrupulous business man named Frank (Liev Schreiber, Defiance). He's basically a used car salesman trying to get you to sign on the dotted line for organs you desperately need. But make sure you don't miss any payments after you've gotten your new kidney. Why? Because if you don't pay the exorbitant prices and interest rates, your organ will be repossessed. Oh yes, even if it's your heart. How will you survive without it? You won't.
Remy (Jude Law, Closer) and Jake (Forest Whitaker, Where the Wild Things Are) are two of these Repo Men and they're very good at their jobs. With surgical precision, they can track and excise overdue organ owners with gory efficiency. But when Remy is forced to get a new heart and begins falling behind on payments, he begins to see the other side of his previous life.
This sounds like a pretty straightforward premise. A sort of Darth Vader understanding where his son was coming from plot. And that is only partially true. Jude Law does an excellent job playing a tough-guy with absolutely no conscious about ending a person's life if their delinquent on their bill. He is absolutely believable as a disconnected man only interested in money and being a great contract employee for The Union. This is seen early on when we witness him retrieving a liver in a rapid manner, making a beautiful incision and ripping the organ out. He heads to the previous owner's sink, rinses it off, packs it up, and heads out while stepping over the now probably lifeless man. Impressive. The gore is essential here to show the audience exactly HOW disconnected Remy is from humanity.
Jake, his partner, is even further gone than Remy. He enjoys his job so much that he's willing to do anything to anyone in order to ensure he and Remy can keep working together.
In the midst of Remy's life is a relationship that's falling apart and a son who is the only thing that keeps him remotely grounded. But when Remy suddenly needs a heart replacement, things rapidly change. You can see the wheels spinning in the back of his head after he returns to work. Would a Repo Man come after him if he failed to pay? What does it mean to have a piece of metal in his chest where his heart used to be? Does this make him less human? Or, in some bizarre way, does it make him more human? These are questions that are left up to the audience to decide.
The ending was telegraphed just enough to give it a fun twist without coming out of the blue. I kind of picked up on it after a significant fight sequence, and you might to if you pay attention. It is enough of an "a-ha!" moment that'll make some film watchers gasp.
With the current, raw, political climate I think this film was excellently timed to hit the big screen. Think about where our healthcare is going and who you want to control it, and this film will cut into you, too. |
Disappointing
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| Review Date: March 21, 2010 |
| Reviewer: C. Sawin, TX |
Repo Men seems to take the only thing I liked about Repo: The Genetic Opera (which was the concept of someone's organs being repossessed) and making it into a full-length film. Repo: The Genetic Opera was pretty terrible overall with a few moments of brilliance and it looked like Repo Men hoped to capitalize on that. I really like the concept, but it just seems like it's never been executed properly. After seeing this film, odds are that theory won't be put to rest.
Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are easily the best part of the film. I've heard some people say that Law doesn't fit this role, but it seems to be the other way around. Law makes this role fit him. This is his story and he makes it worth sitting through. Whitaker shines during the scenes where he struggles with doing his job and helping his best friend. I'm not familiar with a lot of Whitaker's work, but he's one of those actors where his eyes tell the story better than his body language does.
The over the top gore seems to be a big issue for a lot of people. As a horror aficionado, it didn't bother me much. In fact, it made me feel right at home. The gory scenes are the most memorable scenes in the film. The hallway scene in front of the pink door is easily my favorite. It may be because it reminds me of the far superior yet similar hallway sequence in Oldboy. And despite the theater not being very full, the film received a pretty big reaction during the film. The gore scenes, especially. People were applauding the pink door scene. So even if blood and gore may not be your thing, if you see this film, they'll probably be what you remember most when you're walking out of the theater.
The film has a pretty fantastic ending. In fact, it felt like the action thriller had a fairly strong beginning and ending with a rather mediocre middle. Certain things about the story bothered me. After Remy gets his heart transplant, he can't find it within himself to be a repo man anymore. Even though it's "just another job," all he can think about is the fact the person he's cutting open has a family. It leads one to believe that he can't kill anymore. Then later on, it shows him killing other repo men that work for The Union. Do they not have families, too? Could he kill these men because he knows the ins and outs of the job they perform everyday? There were several other similar inconsistencies throughout the film that stuck out like that (anyone else notice "Repossession Mambo" was misspelled in Remy's first draft of his novel?).
Repo Men should have been one of my favorite films of the year, at least thus far. I love the idea of repo men repossessing organ transplants people can't pay for a little too much. That idea and two strong male leads should have made this film stellar. Other than the excessive gore (which I loved) and the questionable parts of the storyline, it's hard for me to pinpoint what exactly about the film didn't sit well with me. The film reminded me a bit of films like The Transporter and Underworld. Not so much in content, but in the sense that they were films that contained elements of things that I love but just weren't executed properly. I don't really think Repo Men is an awful film or as bad as all these ratings from top critics are making the film out to be. It's still worth seeing, but it just doesn't live up to expectations and is a bit disappointing. |
Could have been much better
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| Review Date: August 1, 2010 |
| Reviewer: D. Mathis, Florida USA |
| I was disapointed with this movie...and after much consideration, I figured it out. The cast didn't mesh. That simple. Jude Law and Chiwetel Ejiofor would have been much better in the roles as Repo Men - Liev Schreiber wasn't more than a pseudo-bad guy salesman, Lance Henriksen or Michael Caine would have been much more to the point, and that would have made all the difference in this being rated as "it's ok" by me to a solid 5 star rating. Basically, all three main characters needed a british accent. And to be well suited for their roles, in my opinion. The plot is great - the thought behind the story is great as well - and as Jude is a perfect match, sorry....Forest isn't. Chiwetel's well known endearing facial scar would have put this over the top. Michael would have been the perfect british business bad-guy. Whoever cast this film really messed up. Hoping there's another version of this story line with the right cast... |
A poorly written story squandered the talents of its actors.
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| Review Date: March 21, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Mohamed F. El-Hewie, Hackensack, NJ USA |
Even though a science fiction story should not be held to the boundaries of reality, breaching those boundaries must be justified. Here, the most disturbing acts in The Repo Men were the removal of organs from living people or implanting organs with total disregard to the boundaries of biology. Aside from the criminal and unethical murder of people who could not pay their mortgage on time, cutting skin and missing with deep living tissue, on the fly, with the patients walking, taking, and moving with deeply opened tissues, is moronic. The risk/benefit balance of breaching the laws of biology to grip the minds of the viewers favors disgust and disdain over fear, shock, or awe.
The talented and motivated actors and actresses who entrusted the movie maker to make them shine, ended up carving a foolish play that would not stand the test of consumer approval.
Once you get the zest of the childish design of the story, you start asking many questions that lead to the same conclusion: the story is poorly written. The high-tech company could design, sell, and trace its products to people through electronic tracking and remote system, yet it could not disable those sold devises when a customer defaults on payment. Why? A: The desperate and random intent to inject blood, skin injury, and violence that fits the mind of the moviemaker rather than respecting the intelligence of the viewer.
Amidst the high tech industry and the civilized urban population, the movie enforces the idea that there was total absence of professional ethics, criminal persecution, or public awareness and that the few vigilantes have no option other than devising their own tricks to uproot an outlawed business and save the lives of many victims.
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great movie wish it had an aternative ending
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| Review Date: August 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Brian M. Sparacino, |
great movie extremily graphic
loved the gruesomeness in the movie it out does some horror movies ive seen loved it all the way up til the last 10 min
this dvd needs an alternative ending feature |
repomen
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| Review Date: August 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Joann L. Helsing, Muskegon,Mi. USA |
| this movie wasn't as good as we thought it would be. I really wouldn't recomend it. |
Excellent choice
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| Review Date: August 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: michael ewell, SAFFORD, AZ, US |
| I really enjoyed this movie the directing was sharp as well as the script and the story telling.The ending was unexpected .I highly recommend this movie.Michael Ewell |
BUY IT
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| Review Date: August 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Mike S., Milford, MA |
Once you get past the faulty notion of legitimate medical business practices that include the murder of clients who don't pay their bills, the movie is enjoyable as a tense science fiction action film about corporate greed, legalized assassination, the line of moral rectitude, and a man with no conscience slowly discovering that life needs a conscience. Remy, ( played by Jude Law ) is struggling with his family life, which makes perfect sense since he has virtually no conscience and murders people to reposess highly expensive artifical organs, by cutting them out of living client's bodies, on a commission basis. When the tables are turned on him, he understands the nightmare his job has made of a lot of people's lives. I'm not exactly satisfied with the ending, but..., it was a twist that I didn't expect..., and it was a good enough twist to make it work. Since I was very entertained by this movie from beginning to end, I have to recommend it. The disk worked very well, audio and video were pefect.
- Mike Silverman
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Better than expected.
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| Review Date: August 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: R. White, Brookings, OR |
| After having seen a couple of reviews before I bought this I was pleasantly surprised to find this film to be much more entertaining that expected. The ending was also a big plus in my opinion. |
Bloody, unoriginal, liked it anyway
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| Review Date: August 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: CC, TN |
No review of Repo Men is going to sway your opinion. You like it or you don't. What I can tell you is that it is completely unoriginal. Take a lot (a LOT) of Logan's Run, add a dash of Brazil, salt it with Robocop's ultraviolence, and then swipe the entire last act of Virtuosity, and you have Repo Men. It's a big, bloody ripoff, but somehow it worked for me. Laughed uncontrollably during some of the more extreme repo scenes... maybe I'm just a bad person, eh?
C. |
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