With Repo Men- not to be confused with another Universal Studios production, Repo Man, from the 1980's- one may want to jump right away to a reference point in recent memory. In the shallow scheme of things, one isn't completely wrong in comparing Repo Men to Repo: The Genetic Opera. Both films feature a character who works for a company in some un-timed future in an un-named city, and the job is to repossess a person's particular organ if it's not paid up by the company that provided it. Except that's really where it ends (at least, as far as I can recall with the Genetic Opera, which has its cult but is just beyond me how it's even watchable, but I digress). First point for not being the Genetic Opera then.
With Repo Men, it's solidly footed in science fiction, where the main Repo Man in question, played by Jude Law, is content with his lot in life, and kind of enjoys what he does as a bounty hunter, along with childhood friend Forest Whitaker's character. But a hiccup happens when Remy gets electro-shocked on the job with a defribilator. He's given a 'new' heart by the company he works for, and finds that a) he can't seem to get the same repossession mojo working for him (he starts imagining silly things like the man's wife and kids he's slicing into), and, therefore, b) he can't get the money he needs to pay the monthly payments for his ridiculously priced heart. You'd think a company like that would offer some health insurance benefits, though it goes without saying in this future- a likely and frighteningly Orwellian progression into corporate health business- that's part of the irony.
From here the story takes us into the realm of what is very expected- of the hero meeting up with a similarly afflicted woman (Alice Braga), and the two have to get themselves un-repo'd at the main headquarters, or find some safe haven overseas, or both. More-so the first one, but this comes after what is an otherwise interesting, if not amazing, science fiction story. While the movie is based on a book, and also written as a script, by Eric Garcia, I was reminded of possibly coming across a Philip K. Dick short story (and not just because of the Blade Runner visual scheme, though that's a VERY obvious connection). We get people who work in a future society, and its as much about personalities, how they're shaped in such a repressed but accepted world, as is the technology and the rules. And yet even with this I hoped the makers would have gone a little further early in the film (for example, why is it only Law and Whitaker go after scumbag guys who don't pay up, why not, for a more provocative example, a middle aged woman or someone more fragile, more vulnerable and recognizable than a common whatever).
But this isn't really where the film goes wrong exactly. And it's hard to pinpoint because it's not the kind that goes off a cliff or anything at a specific point. It's like the makers still keep putting some interesting things on screen, the conflict between Remy and his former friend, and his developing bond with the woman (his wife and kid are almost left by the wayside - almost as in I'd rather not think about how they're brought back in the third act), but something just feels... off a lot of the time. The actors, primarily its stars Law and Whitaker, gives their all in their characters, and Liev Schrieber has some fun in his few minutes on screen as the quasi-boss at the branch of the company. But so much of the film, for all of its ideas questioning a society that could do this to people, feels 'cribbed', taken from parts (if you'll forgive the analogy) of the body of other movies. Indeed I have to put a spoiler here just to make note of the fact that the last act of the film, whether it's intentionally doing it or not, rips off Brazil's final act so blatantly Gilliam should give a loud WTF to the makers.
I'm sure there's a lot of great things in the original book by Garcia, and Miguel Sapochnik, in his feature directorial debut, has some fun with his very visual world (look at that white room Law and Braga enter into with all of the workers lined up!) It's also, for all of its clever touches and thought provocation, derivative and not particularly exciting when it comes to the action - even in that warped last act. I wouldn't mind the 'cribbing' and taking from various films, both from the look and specific references (hammer used in fight against baddies in a long hallway scene, Oldboy much), if at least something really fresh were brought to the table. Sadly, it's at best a Saturday matinée, not the Matrix.
