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Some weeks, reviewing a movie is like being the U.S. surgeon general. You find yourself issuing warning after warning.
This week's caution: Don't confuse "Repo Men" with the old Emilio Estevez comedy "Repo Man" and don't go unless you have a strong stomach for scalpels slicing into human skin, blood spraying and spurting, and the sight and sound of human flesh being split open while artificial organs are (squishily) fished out.
- Starring: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker.
- Rating: R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, language and some sexuality/nudity.
- Web site: www.repomenarecoming.com/
As a longtime fan of medical shows, I think I have a high tolerance for such shots, but "Repo Men" left me queasy. Nevertheless, it has a twist at the end that I didn't see coming.
"Repo Men" is a futuristic action-thriller set at a time when people can buy expensive artificial organs to keep themselves alive. "You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your family," salesmen soothe, but the prices for artiforgs or artificial organs are high ($975,000 for a new heart) and so are the interest rates and penalties for late payments.
A repo man can use a high-tech scanner to tell when an organ's owner is past due on payments. Go too long without ponying up for a liver or kidney, for instance, and the repo man will stun the client with a Taser-like weapon and repossess the organ by doing makeshift surgery right there on the kitchen floor.
It's nasty business but Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker), best friends since childhood, do it with glee and without conscience. Remy is being pressured by his unhappy wife to trade his repo job for a more sanitary salesman one.
But before he can do that, he has the sort of workplace accident that lands him on the other side of the ledger. The hunter becomes the hunted in this movie from Miguel Sapochnik, a first-time feature director.
It's based on the novel "The Repossession Mambo" by Eric Garcia, who shares screenplay credit with TV writer and producer Garrett Lerner. In addition to Mr. Law and Mr. Whitaker, it stars Liev Schreiber, Alice Braga and Carice van Houten.
The movie is set roughly 20 years from now, but other than a few clues to the future -- soldiers at the Nigerian border, TVs and animated billboards everywhere, cars that are slightly off -- it provides no information about when or how these artiforgs came about.
The premise is fascinating and the leads have good chemistry but the execution is weighted toward the bloody, gory, graphic side of the equation. A hideout for recipients on the run looks like a set piece from the parade of end-of-the-world movies that have come our way.
This could and should have been smarter but too much attention is focused on the bodies and blood and too little on the society that drives people to such desperate medical measures. As with any delicate surgery, more experienced and skilled hands might have made all the difference in the world.
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