Repo Men is a movie that was in the cinema for a very short time and I never managed to get to see it. It’s based on the novel by Eric Garcia and stars Jude Law, Liev Schreiber, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga, Carice Van Houten, RZA and is directed by relatively new director, Miguel Sapochnik.
The story is somewhat twisted but that’s sort of what the movie is all about. I’ll let the synopsis do the talking:
Synopsis: In the futuristic action—thriller Repo Men, humans have extended and improved our lives through highly sophisticated and expensive mechanical organs created by a company called The Union. The dark side of these medical breakthroughs is that if you don’t pay your bill, The Union sends its highly skilled repo men to take back its property…with no concern for your comfort or survival. Jude Law plays Remy, one of the best organ repo men in the business. When he suffers a cardiac failure on the job, he awakens to find himself fitted with the company’s top—of—the—line heart—replacement…as well as a hefty debt. But a side effect of the procedure is that his heart’s no longer in the job. When he can’t make the payments, The Union sends its toughest enforcer, Remy’s former partner Jake (Academy Award® winner Forest Whitaker), to track him down. Now that the hunter has become the hunted, Remy joins Beth (Alice Braga), another debtor who teaches him how to vanish from the system. And as he and Jake embark on a chase across a landscape populated by maniacal friends and foes, one man will become a reluctant champion for thousands on the run.
The Repo Men blu ray gives you two options when it starts. The Theatrical version (the version you’ll have seen at the cinema) and the Unrated version (the one with all the extra bits that were probably a bit too on the edge to get it put through the ratings board). I decided to watch the Unrated version and the movie was everything I expected it to be! Gore, blood, gore and a bit more blood!
When the subject matter is that of reclaiming body parts, you know it’s going to be somewhat gory! The 18 certificate suggested as much as the red-band trailer that was released when the movie came out in the cinema showed us what we might be expecting. We’ve see Forest Whittaker in these sort of dark movies before (Panic Room springs to mind) but this genre of all our action and violence is pretty new to Jude Law who we usually see in romantic movies and yes, I know he was in Sherlock Holmes! It was great to see Law smashing through doors, causing mayhem yet still with his usually suaveness (is that a word?!) and whitty hunmour which works really well.
Forest Whittaker was his usual high calibre self alongside Liev Schreiber who plays his part of the semi-baddie pretty well. Carice Van Houten is unfortauntely underused in the movie and seems to have hardly any part of the story whatsoever. Alice Braga is the heroine but I think I’d rather have seen their roles switched although I may be biased as I think Van Houten is an awesome actress.
I think what lets this movie down is it’s predicatability. There’s nothing in here that we’ve not seen before in other futuristic sci-fi movies. Robocop, Gattaca and Total Recall all spring to mind which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I was hoping for a little more.
If you like all out action and want to see Jude Law kicking some butt, then you’re going to like this movie, especially the unrated version! Although it wasn’t an original story, it still kept me entertained for the two hours that it ran.
Repo Men is out to buy on DVD and Blu Ray NOW.
Extras:
- Unrated Feature (119:00 min.) + 8 minutes of extra gory footage
- Deleted Scenes (8:24)
- Extended City Shot (1:11)
- Flashback – Poem (1:33)
- Flashback – Tank Video Camera (0:30)
- Jimmy T-Bone Pink Sheet (0:53)
- 90 Days (4:17)
- The Union Commercials (3:14)
- Thanks to the Union (0:60)
- Didn’t have to Happen (0:33)
- Super Dry (0:20)
- Wife to U (0:23)
- Jack Soda Party (0:30)
- Jack Soda Toy (0:10)
- Mattress (0:18)
- VFX Progressions (est. 3:00)
- Feature Commentary with Director Miguel Sapochnik and Writers Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner
