Repo Men

Saw Repo Men, a rollicking scifi/action with shades of rather dark humor. The film is an elaborate satire of the economic collapse of the early 2000s. It reverses economic and physical health and imagines a world where people buy synthetic organs at outrageous mark-ups. In the case of non-payment, the bank sends out repo-men to repossess the organs. One of these repo men is the protagonist, played by Jude Law. He takes Patrick-Bateman-like joy from harvesting the organs of deadbeats. His wife is understandably upset about him being a professional murderer but the money is good and he clearly enjoys it.

In keeping with yesterday's speculation about the age of the screenplay, I suspect this was originally a Schwarzenegger flick. I suspect the protagonist is supposed to be lovably dumb. He doesn't understand his wife's discomfort with his job, is equated with a roman gladiator at one point, and we are told he literally has a small brain. Also, the film opens with him spectacularly misinterpreting Schrödinger's famous thought-experiment: he claims that the experiment was actually preformed and also that the cat was literally both alive and dead. He then asks if we will be a docile cat, or a cat who fights. It's just hilariously wrong. The film successfully made me sympathize with and root for the protagonist however, so this isn't a knock on the likability of the character, I just think he shouldn't have been played by Jude Law. The production team may have originally imagined Jason Statham or some other loveable rogue but wound up with an actor who apparently has no idea that he looks strikingly like a noble elk. The dumb-act is a tough sell.

Anyway, stupidity aside, the film has many clever touches to it. The near-future world is well fleshed-out. Non-plot-important products are ubiquitously advertised, the cars and fashions are a bit different but not outlandishly so, there are still run-down apartments but also ritzy glass ones. The fight-scenes are exciting and, in a delightful bit of choreographic cleverness, feature a fighting-style that involves inflicting an open wound and then hammering on it. The theme of surgery and fleshy wounds is amazingly thorough. Keep your stomachs steeled for a scene of erotic surgery during the climax of the film! Off-topic, but I also really dug Jude's boss. He's so gloriously indifferent and malevolent.

The film contains references/homages to various famous scifis. There's a scene in the organ-manufacturing plant that evokes iPhone manufacturing plants and reminded me strongly of Brazil for some reason. There's a shameless riff on the famous hallway scene in Oldboy (he even wields a ball peen hammer, in a grossly deliberate hat-tip.) Like I say, there's a strong Schwarzenegger-ish flavor and the governator, for all his action-comedy films, did star in many scifis (such as The Terminator, Total Recall, The Running Man, and Last Action Hero (does that count as scifi? I'm counting it.)) So this movie was very fun and fairly clever. I didn't elaborate much on the economic allegory above but look at all of the other crap I talked about! Many layers, a lot of fun. It is, broadly speaking, an action movie, but I'm willing to overlook that.