Repo Men

Not to be confused with Repo Man (film).

Repo Men
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Miguel Sapochnik
Produced by	Scott Stuber
Screenplay by	Eric Garcia Garrett Lerner
Based on	The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia
Starring	Jude Law Forest Whitaker Liev Schreiber Alice Braga Carice van Houten Chandler Canterbury RZA Yvette Nicole Brown
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Cinematography	Enrique Chediak
Editing by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Studio	Relativity Media Stuber Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	March 19, 2010 (2010-03-19)
Running time	111 minutes
Country	United States Canada
Language	English Spanish
Budget	$32 million
Box office	$18,409,891

Repo Men is a 2010 American-Canadian science fiction action-thriller film directed by Miguel Sapochnik, and starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. It is based on the novel The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia.

Plot

The film opens in a very grungy, broken, obviously destitute ghetto area where we see a half-naked man laboriously two-finger pecking at an old typewriter. We hear Remy in the third person musing on the fate of Schrodinger's cat.

In 2025, a corporation called "The Union" has perfected the creation of bio-mechanical organs, which are available to those with money or "good credit." If a customer falls three months behind on payments, a "repo man" is sent to reclaim the artificial organ (artiforgs). The process of the repossession almost always results in the death of the customer. Remy (Jude Law) and his partner Jake Freivald (Forest Whitaker) are considered the best of the Union's repo men. This causes personal issues between Remy and his wife, Carol (Carice van Houten), forcing Remy to consider a transfer to sales.

After taking out a "Nest", a hideout of those who have fallen behind on credit, Remy and Jake are asked by their boss Frank Mercer (Liev Schreiber) to become full time raid captains, those who lead daily Nest raids. Remy refuses and is about to ask Frank about a job in sales, but he is interrupted by Jake. Later while driving, Jake tries to convince Remy that their job is important regardless of the moral issues.

Still attempting to save his marriage with a transfer to sales, Jake tells Remy that his last job should be a cardiac repossession from a musician named T-Bone of whom Remy is a big fan. The repo requires the use of a defibrillator. The device malfunctions; and Remy is violently shocked and severely injured. The damage requires the replacement of his own heart with an artiforg heart.

Carol divorces Remy; so he moves in temporarily with Jake. Although he tries his hand at sales, he is unable to lie to potential costumers about the consequences of non-payment and loses most of his commissions. Remy is forced back into repo to pay for his heart. But due to his own artificial organ, he develops sympathy with his victims leaving him unable to perform his job and earn any money. When Jake discovers that Remy has not been repossessing, he takes him to another nest to find enough artiforgs to clear his debt and get over his inability to repossess. However, Remy still cannot find it to do his job. Jake stuns two insolvents and insists that Remy stay and finish the repossessions until he gets over his "Hump." During Remy's deliberations with his conscience, a debtor revives and beats him unconscious.

Upon awakening Remy encounters Beth (Alice Braga), who is past due on multiple organ transplants. After a failed attempt to clear both their individual accounts back at the Union's local headquarters, Remy torches his car and anything else traceable before the two leave to live in the outskirts. Beth gifts him with an old manual, ribbon typewriter; and Remy decides to document his life as a repo man. The typing process is a flashback to the opening scene of the film. As he works, he is interrupted by the arrival of another repo man, identified earlier in the film as a rather pathetic "level 3" collector, intending to repossess his heart. Remy sets a trap and drops him three stories through a hole in the floor and ultimately drops the typewriter on his head. Beth's prosthetic knee is badly damaged when she accidentally follows the repo man down the same hole.

Using the repo man's vehicle, Remy sneaks back into his former workplace to obtain a pair of jamming devices that fool organ scanners used by repo men. He attempts to force Frank to clear his account only to discover that due to his prior attempt, all accounts can only be cleared back at the Union's central office. Remy and Beth attempt to flee the country at the airport, but are taken by security when the bleeding from Beth's knee leaves a significant pool on the floor. A major fight with airport security ensues. Jake has been put on their trail after the failure of the earlier repo attempt. He finds them at the airport; but is on the wrong side of a security panel and can only watch their escape. The pair head to a black market doctor, where Beth's knee is replaced.

After the procedure, the two are stopped by Jake, who has tracked the pair. A bitter fight ensues, during which it is revealed that it was Jake that rigged the defibrillator unit to fail, causing Remy's heart replacement — he did this to ensure that Remy keeps his organ repossession job, so they could get promoted. The two fight, but Jake wins the fight fairly decisively. During a pause for manic laughter, Remy simultaneously stabs Jake above the knee, while Jake knocks Remy unconscious with a heavy steel hook, and Beth shoots Jake with his stun pistol.

After a sequence of phantasmagorical flashbacks, Beth awakens Remy and they become aware that an organ repossession raid is underway. They flee with the other residents of the ghetto and accidentally stumble upon a scan-blocked refuge with a small fraction of the other residents. After an indeterminate period of rest and sleep, Remy leaves the refuge to find dozens of the other occupants slain and eviscerated by the Union's repo men. He resolves to destroy the corporation and delete all accounts of all Union implanted individuals: "We wipe the system. No more accounts. No one's overdue." Remy passes his manuscript to his son during a brief meeting on a train.

The pair then travel to The Union's headquarters, hoping to fulfill their pledge to wipe the system. Remy and Beth are pursued throughout the building, and after an intense battle, arrive at the Pink Door, the main database for the Union. Using Beth's prosthetic eye, they are able to seal themselves inside just as Jake and Frank arrive. Once inside, they discover that the server does not have any interface other than an organ scanner. Remy realizes that the only modifications they can make to the system are with what they brought in themselves. Remy and Beth take turns cutting themselves open in order to use the scanner internally, clearing their own accounts. Jake and Frank are able to enter through the use of an organ scavenged from a victim of Remy's earlier fight and catch Remy trying desperately to scan Beth's last overdue organ. Remy tells them that he is losing her. Jake asks Remy if she is worth it, to which he responds: "She's worth every job that we ever did". Frank pulls a gun to kill Remy, but Jake turns on his employer, killing him with a knife. Jake then assists Remy in reviving Beth; after which, he deposits two explosives inside the organ retrieval unit in lieu of the many organs previously scanned. The explosion destroys the Union's mainframe, wiping everyone who has an account with the corporation out of the system.

Later, Remy is on a tropical beach, enjoying his freedom with Beth and Jake. His text from earlier in the film has been published into a book, The Repossession Mambo. Remy turns to look at Jake, but sees instead the background flickering and incoherent voices. It is discovered that Remy, in fact, sustained severe brain damage when Jake hit him with the heavy hook earlier in the film. Jake, out of remorse, has paid off Remy's account and has had him placed in a neural network, allowing him to live the rest of his life in a dream. Beth is still alive but unconscious, and when questioned as to what to do with her, Jake says he will take care of her. This renders the ending sequence of the film as simply a fantasy of Remy's. Jake finds Remy's manuscript, which he greets with a sad, stifled sigh, as his former partner is wheeled away, presumably to spend the rest of his life in his fantasy world. The film ends with Frank delivering his sales pitch.

Cast

• Jude Law as Remy, a repo man.
• Forest Whitaker as Jake Freivald, Remy's partner.
• Carice van Houten as Carol, Remy's wife.
• Alice Braga as Beth, a singer who has multiple artificial organs.
• Liev Schreiber as Frank Mercer, Remy's boss.
• Chandler Canterbury as Peter, Remy's son.
• RZA as T-Bone, a soul musician in debt.
• Yvette Nicole Brown as Rhodesia
• John Leguizamo as Asbury, a black-market organs dealer.
• Liza Lapira as Alva, a black-market surgeon's assistant.

Production

In 2003^{[citation needed]}, screenwriters Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner began collaborating with Miguel Sapochnik on a screenplay based on a novel being written by Garcia. The novel, Repossession Mambo, was published March 31, 2009.

In June 2007, Universal Pictures cast Jude Law and Forest Whitaker into the film. Production began in September 2007. Casting for this film was done by Mindy Marin, production design by David Sandefur, art direction by Dan Yarhi, set decoration by Clive Thomasson, and costume design by Caroline Harris. Filming took place in Toronto, and the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario.

Fight choreography was done by Hiro Koda and Jeff Imada. Forest Whitaker has been a longtime student of Filipino Martial Arts under Dan Inosanto and it is featured heavily in the vicious blade and blunt-weapon fight scenes in film.

The score to Repo Men was composed by Marco Beltrami, who recorded his score with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.

Release

Repo Men was released theatrically in the United States and Canada on March 19, 2010, having been moved up from an original release date of April 2, 2010. The film was promoted with a seven-minute comic released on Apple.com on March 15, 2010.

The unrated DVD and Blu-ray Disc was released on July 27, 2010.

Reception

Critical response

The film received generally negative reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 22% of 103 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 4.2 out of 10. Among Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics", which consists of popular and notable critics, the film holds an overall approval rating of 16%, based on 25 reviews. The site's general consensus is that "Repo Men has an intriguing premise, as well as a likable pair of leads, but they're wasted on a rote screenplay, indifferent direction, and mind-numbing gore." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, has a rating score of 32 based on 31 reviews.

Box office

Repo Men opened at #4 in its debut weekend in North America with $6,126,170 in 2,521 theaters, averaging $2,430 per theater. The film eventually grossed $17,805,837 worldwide—$13,794,835 in North America and $4,011,002 in other territories. In July 2010, Parade Magazine listed the film as the #7 on its list of "Biggest Box Office Flops of 2010 (So Far)."

External links

• Official website
• Repo Men at the Internet Movie Database
• Repo Men at AllRovi
• Repo Men at Rotten Tomatoes
• Repo Men at Box Office Mojo