DVD Reviews

Repo Men – DVD Review

By Jeff Swindoll Jul 26, 2010, 15:09 GMT

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. ...more

Need a new kidney? Waiting on the donor’s list is for losers in the future. Just zip down to the Union and buy a mechanical replacement for your kidney for a variety of organs.

Their salesmen will happily have you sign a contract. However, miss some payments and some not so nice men will slip in and gorily snip out the loaned organ.

If you’re ailing and need a replacement organ then get down to the Union. The company will happily sell you a new kidney, pancreas, or a host of other spare parts. They even offer easy payment plans for their super-expensive wares. I mean, you have to do it for your family if you don’t have to do it for yourself.

What you don’t read in the fine print is that if you fall too far behind payments then a shadowy repo man will repossess your organ. Remy (Jude Law) is one such repo man; the best there is in fact. His buddy Jake (Forest Whitaker) also works for the Union and the two see their jobs as a competition. Remy’s wife Carol (Carice van Houten) doesn’t like his long hours and feels it’s affecting their marriage and his relationship with his son Peter (Chandler Canterbury).

So much so that she kicks him out of the house. If that’s not enough, during a repossession of blues artist T-Bone’s (RZA) mechanical heart things go horrifically wrong for Remy. When he awakens his boss Frank (Liev Schreiber) and Jake tells him that he’s lucky to be alive but his own heart was so fried that he now has to rely on a mechanical replacement.

At first Remy doesn’t want to sign the contract for the new heart, but his survival instinct has him signing on the dotted line. When he returns to work he finds that his new heart is not in his work and he falls behind on payments.

He goes on the run with overdue, nearly bionic singer Beth (Alice Braga), but the Union cannot have a rogue repo man and they’ll send all they have to repossess Remy’s ticker.

If you’re scratching your head and wondering where you may have seen this plotline before it could be one of two things. The first may be the “Can we have your liver” sketch from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (which has a cameo in the film) and the other is Repo: The Genetic Opera (which I could wager got the same inspiration from Monty).

Now that second choice as more of a rock opera and you’ll not find Jude Law or Forest Whitaker breaking into song. What both films do feature is a dystopian future where organs are repossessed, killing the recipient, by a faceless, uncaring corporation. This version is also more of an action film with Jude Law trying to outrun the Union and Forest Whitaker.

Where the film may stray is that it seems like the ideas presented might’ve fit more readily into a 90 minute runtime and not the two hours that it plays out in. We’re pretty much aware of the plot points of the film when we see the trailer, ironically not found on the disc, so maybe we could’ve gotten to that action sooner than later.

It’s pretty obvious that the predator will become the prey and have a revelation that snatching organs is not just your average job, especially when you’re the one whose organ is to be snatched. So there is a certain amount of predictability.

Even a last minute twist was seen coming by this reviewer, but I’ll not spoil it for you. However, it is a well-acted, glossy film and I did have a good time watching it. There are also several winching moments of organ removal as well as some “self surgery” that looked painful.

Repo Men is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. You get two cuts of the film; one is the theatrical cut running 112 minutes and an unrated cut running 120 minutes.

Special features include a commentary from director Miguel Sapochnik and writers Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner. Next are 8 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary by the same participants. There are 4 minutes of Union commercials and the 6 minute “Inside the Visual Effects” of the film.

It may be familiar and overlong, but Repo Men has its moments. They mostly come from the cast and some gruesome repossession. Just make sure you mail in your payments on time.