Repo Men is a film about hating your job, set in a dystopian future. In that way, it wants to be “Office Space meets Blade Runner.” Those films are classics; unfortunately, Repo Men is not.
Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forrest Whitaker) are collection agents for an evil corporation that sells unhealthy Americans artificial organs on installment plans. Once a recipient is 90 days past due on their payments, the repo men come to collect, and if the poor slubs dies, well, they should of made their payments. At least this is the attitude that allows Law and Whitaker to stun and slice their way to large commissions.
But then Remy has a change of heart (literally and figuratively) and decides that killing people and collecting commissions on their internal organs is somehow immoral. So rather than killing people for the Man, he tries to kill the Man. While Repo Men manages to land the occasional joke, the film in general comes off as a big, bloody mess. By the time the script unveils the third-act-twists, it was hard to care.
Fans of ultra-violent “comedies” might enjoy RP, both others should save their hard-earned money.
Also, Roger Ebert was at the screening I attended, and I was probably very distracted by thinking of what I was going to say to the king of watching anything. After the film I shook his hand and he gave me one thumbs up.
