Tantalizing at first and then increasingly tedious
thereafter, Repo Men has a sci-fi set-up
primed to deliver commentary on our callous, insufficient health care system,
and then doesn’t do so. Lay the blame squarely at the feet of director Miguel
Sapochnik and writers Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner, who after establishing a
near-future in which the sick purchase pricey artificial organs from private
companies, and have them surgically removed by the titular grim reapers if they
don’t keep up with monthly installment payments, use it for nothing more than a
tepid action-chase thriller. In this dystopia, which in its billboard-enhanced
aesthetic closely resembles Blade Runner,
expert repo man Remy (Jude Law) chooses, after much nagging from his wife (Carice
van Houten), to give up his slice-and-dice job to become a desk-jockey
salesman. This plan doesn’t please his bloodthirsty partner Jake (Forest
Whitaker), and doesn’t come to fruition either once he suffers a serious
workplace injury and wakes up to find that he’s had a literal change of heart
to go along with his figurative one. After firmly establishing his characters
and milieu, director Sapochnik does a hatchet-job on Remy’s development of a
conscience, and from there, Repo Men
spirals into a bloody mess, with Remy – unable to pay for his new mecca-valve –
going on the run, falling in love with a cyborg junkie lounge singer (Alice
Braga), and being hunted by Jake. Law and Whitaker do their best with so-so
material that favors arterial spatter to serious emotional drama, and Sapochnik’s
staging of hand-to-hand combat is at least coherent. Unfortunately, his saga is
sluggishly paced, of minor consequence, and increasingly derivative in form and
content, right down to a slow-motion-enabled corridor slaughterfest lifted from
(or an homage to, your choice) Oldboy,
replete with cranium-shattering hammer.
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