Repo Men

Not to be confused with Repo Man (film), Repo! The Genetic Opera, or Operation Repo.

Repo Men
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Miguel Sapochnik
Screenplay by	Eric Garcia Garrett Lerner
Story by	Eric Garcia (novel)
Produced by	Scott Stuber
Starring	Jude Law Forest Whitaker Liev Schreiber Alice Braga Carice van Houten Chandler Canterbury RZA
Cinematography	Enrique Chediak
Edited by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Production companies	Relativity Media Stuber Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	March 19, 2010 (2010-03-19)
Running time	111 minutes
Country	Template:FilmUS
Language	English
Budget	$32 million
Box office	$18,409,891

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

Plot

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. The process of the repossession almost always results in the death of the customer.

Remy and his partner Jake are considered the best of the Union's repo men, though this causes personal issues between Remy and his wife, causing Remy to request a transfer to sales. At his final repossession job, Remy is wounded and forced to receive an artificial heart, which his sales job can not hope to pay for, forcing him back into repo. But due to his own artificial organ, he can not perform his job, and his personal life quickly falls to pieces, and behind in payments. After botching an attack on a hideout of people who are marked for repossession, he is attacked by former targets of repossession and knocked out.

Remy, upon awakening, encounters Beth, who is past due on multiple organ transplants. After a failed attempt to clear her account back at the Union's headquarters, Remy destroys all evidence of his life and Beth's before the two leave to live in the outskirts, and Beth convinces Remy to document his life and experiences. As he finishes, a repo-man arrives to repossess his heart, and Remy overpowers him. Using the repo-man's vehicle, Remy sneaks back into his former workplace to obtain a pair of 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 it is discovered that Beth's prosthetic knee was damaged due to their earlier fight with the repo-man. After a major fight, Remy runs back into Jake, and escapes from him. 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 gains the upper hand, and knocks Remy unconscious with a heavy steel hook.

Remy awakens, and is hurried to a safe house by Beth, the occupants of which have been slain by the Union's repo-men. He resolves to destroy the corporation and clear the accounts of Beth and himself. After passing his story to his son during a brief meeting on a train, the pair travel to The Union's headquarters, hoping to remove themselves from 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, except for a scanner. Remy realizes that the only way to remove himself from the system is to repo himself. Remy and Beth cut themselves open in order to use the scanner internally, clearing their accounts.

Jake and Frank are able to enter through the use of an organ, seeing Remy trying desperately to resuscitate Beth, who has stopped breathing during the process. Jake asks Remy if she was worth all the hardship and pain that he has put himself through, which he confirms. 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. 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. This plot twist was alluded to earlier in the film as Remy explicitly stated that he had only been knocked out four times in his life. All four of which were accounted for prior to him being hit in the head with the chain which of course would have been the fifth time. 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 second half 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, Remy's former partner
• Carice van Houten as Carol, Remy's wife
• Alice Braga as Beth, a singer who has multiple artificial organs
• Liev Schreiber as Frank, Remy's Boss
• Chandler Canterbury as Peter, Remy's son
• RZA as T-Bone, a soul musician in debt
• John Leguizamo as Asbury, a black-market organs dealer
• Liza Lapira as Alva, a black-market surgeon

Production

In 2003 , 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

It 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 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 14%, based on a sample of 21 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)."

Criticism

There have been noted similarities between the premise of Repo Men and Repo! The Genetic Opera. The director of Repo! The Genetic Opera, Darren Lynn Bousman, has openly stated his displeasure with the similarity of the movie to his own. Repo! was originally proposed to Universal Studios, according to writer Terrance Zdunich. Universal Studios liked the premise but not the musical nature of the film, and ultimately they turned down the offer. Repo! was accepted by Lionsgate films, Bousman has spoken out about the excessive similarities between the plots that go beyond simple convergence of ideas and are only shy of plagiarism due to "exact lines of dialogue or identical lyrics" not being copied/lifted from Repo!'s script. Terrence Zdunich pointed out in his blog that Repo! The Genetic opera was based on a stage play he started 10 years ago whereas Repo Men is based on a novel Repossession Mambo that was not published until 2009 (Repo! having come out in 2008). He went on to say in the same blog that he was "Satisfied that Darren Smith and I [Zdunich] came up with REPO! long before Repo Men (or Repossession Mambo) came into existence..." and would not be suing for copyright infringement.

External links

• Official website
• Repo Men at IMDb
• Repo Men at AllMovie
• Repo Men at Box Office Mojo
• Repo Men at Rotten Tomatoes