Repo Men 
 
 March 17, 2010 
 
 Cast & Credits Remy Jude Law 
 
 Jake Forest Whitaker 
 
 Frank Liev Schreiber 
 
 Beth Alice Braga 
 
 Carol Carice van Houten 
 
 Peter Chandler Canterbury 
 
 Ray Joe Pingue 
 
 
 
 Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Written by Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner, based on Garcia's novel The Repossession Mambo. Running time: 111 minutes. Rated R (for strong bloody violence, grisly images, language and some sexuality/nudity). 
 
 
 
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 "Repo Men" makes sci-fi's strongest possible case for universal health care. In a world of the near future, where they still drive current cars, a giant corporation named the Union will provide you with a human heart, kidney, liver or other organ. Let's say a pancreas costs you, oh, say $312,000. No, it's not covered by insurance, but the sales guy says, "You owe it to yourself and your family." For a guy in need of a pancreas, this is an eloquent argument. Interest rates are around 19 percent. 
 
 Now let's say you can't make the payments. If you fall behind more than three months, they send around a Repo Man who shoots you with a stun gun, slices open your body, reaches in and repossesses the organ. To be sure, he puts on latex gloves first. I don't believe the gun kills you, but after they leave you on the floor with an organ missing, your prognosis is poor. 
 
 
 
 Let's say you were conscious during such a procedure. Would it hurt? You bet. At one point in the film, our heroes Remy and Beth (Jude Law and Alice Braga) decide the only way to outwit the company's computer is to repossess themselves. He has a donor heart, and as for Beth, her heart is her own, but is surrounded by guest organs. They don't actually carve themselves open and remove the organs. No, that would be fatal. But they have to reach inside each other with a bar-code scanner and scan them in. As Remy carves into his chest with a big old knife, you oughta see the way his fist clenches and how he grits his teeth. He's thinking, I wish I had the public option. 
 
 
 
 I don't know if the makers of this film intended it as a comedy. A preview audience regarded it with polite silence, and left the theater in an orderly fashion. There are chases and shootouts, of course, and a standard overwrought thriller soundtrack, with the percussion guy hammering on cymbals and a big bass drum. Even then, you wonder. 
 
 
 
 Remy and Beth find themselves locked in a corridor with a dozen guys from the evil corporation, who are well armed. They dodge the bullets and wham some guys with karate, and then Remy pauses, strips off his shirt, reveals his bare (pre-repo) chest and is wearing kinky leather pants with buckles. From scabbards in the back, he withdraws two long knives that help explain why he wasn't seated earlier in the scene. He slices some other guys. Then he shouts "hacksaw!" to Beth, and she slides it to him on the floor, and he whirls around and decapitates three guys, it looked like, although it happened real fast. 
 
 
 
 What are people supposed to think? Is this an action scene, or satire? Does it make any difference? I dunno. I know the actors play everything with deep, earnest seriousness. The head of the Union corporation is Frank (Liev Schreiber), who demands complete dedication from his repo men and is humorously not humorous. Maybe he's not the head of the whole Union, but only their immediate boss. The Union's headquarters building is maybe 100 stories high, and Remy stumbles into a room with guys in white suits working at tables that stretch farther than a football field. 
 
 
 
 There are enough props in this movie to clean out the Organ Department at Moo & Oink's. When I say they're up to their elbows in blood, I mean it. This work takes its toll. Remy's friend at work is a repo man named Jake, played by Forest Whitaker. Like most Forest Whitaker characters and Whitaker himself, he is a warm, nice man. I noticed for the second time in a week (after "Our Family Wedding") that Whitaker has lost a lot of weight and looks great. I hope the extra pounds weren't repo'ed. ||||| Film Reviews 
 
 Repo Men -- Film Review 
 
 "Repo Men" 
 
 Bottom Line: Let the 2010 Razzies race begin! 
 
 The future looks awfully predictable (underscore "awfully") in "Repo Men," a blood-soaked, derivative and increasingly ridiculous sci-fi thriller in which Jude Law and Forest Whitaker play a pair of hotshot repossession agents who forcefully remove artificial organs from those who fall behind on their payments.Comprising reclaimed bits from "Blade Runner," "A Clockwork Orange" and "Children of Men" and glibly served up with hyper Guy Ritchie attitude by first-time feature director Miguel Sapochnik, the resulting in-your-face mess never knows what it wants to be when it grows up.Those identity issues are destined to take their toll when it comes to tracking down an audience this weekend.When you think clinically violent, muscular, futuristic action vehicles, the nominally thoughtful likes of Law, Whitaker and Liev Schreiber don't readily spring to mind, and that should pose a problem where a targeted young-male demo is concerned.Based on the cautionary tale "Repossession Mambo" by Eric Garcia ("Matchstick Men") and set in a near future where society's quest for eternal youth has come with a price, "Repo Men" revolves around the daily activities of Law's Remy and Forest's Jake on behalf of their employer, an unscrupulous medical technology firm known as the Union.Their job description requires them to track down those in serious arrears and methodically extract those various, leased-to-own synthetic body parts and report back to the head office and their callous, soft-spoken boss (Schreiber).But when an ill-fated repo assignment results in Remy being outfitted with a top-of-the-line Jarvik ticker, he undergoes a, uh, change of heart, and, falling behind in his own payments, finds himself being chased down by his former partner.The film's smug twists and turns might have been more entertaining if one hadn't been able to see any of them coming, but the script, penned by Garcia and Garrett Lerner ("House M.D.") and especially Sapochnik's unsubtle direction signals everything a century in advance.Meanwhile, in front of the cameras, though Law seems to be having fun transformed into a mean, buff fighting machine, one just can't buy him as a kick-ass, Jason Statham-style tough guy when the contrived plotting demands it.Although Whitaker and Schreiber are only slightly less unconvincing, others, including Brazil's Alice Braga ("City of God") and the Netherlands' Carice van Houten ("Black Book"), appear uncomfortable in their English-speaking roles.Shot extensively in Toronto, the film gets decent futuristic value for its production-design buck, courtesy of David Sandefur ("Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D") and visual effects supervisor Aaron Weintraub ("Remember Me"). ||||| What do you call a movie about a giant medical conglomerate that sells human organs on the installment plan — and, if the patients don’t pay, sends a repo man to collect, literally, the company’s pound of flesh? 
 
 Well, back in 2008, you called it “Repo! The Genetic Opera.” And if you were smart you avoided it. 
 
 Now, in 2010, you call it “Repo Men.” 
 
 And if you’re very smart, you still avoid it. 
 
 
 
 Repo Men 
 
 (R) Universal (111 min.) 
 
 Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. With Jude Law, Forest Whitaker. Now playing in New Jersey. 
 
 Stephen Whitty's rating: One star 
 
 Ratings note: The film contains graphic gore, violence and nudity. 
 
 The new, strangely familiar (yet supposedly original) film doesn’t share much more with the older cult horror. For one thing, it doesn’t have any opera. For another, it doesn’t star Paris Hilton. 
 
 So, it’s got that going for it. 
 
 But it’s just as ugly and revolting as the other movie and just as clueless. The first picture thought it was an outrageous satire. This one thinks it’s sardonic adult sci-fi. They’re both wrong. And they’re both awful. 
 
 There’s not much to the story beyond the basic situation. Remy and Jake are a couple of strong-arm guys who drive around some slightly futuristic landscape, hunting down medical deadbeats. And when they find one, out come their scalpels. 
 
 Until the people really are deadbeats. 
 
 Unless you’ve already fallen asleep — which is probably the best way to get through “Repo Men” — you know what’s coming next: Remy is going to have his own, um, change of heart and reconsider his life’s work. And company man Jake is going to go after him. 
 
 Great. Can we go home now? 
 
 If only. Because at this point we have more than an hour of tedious torture to come, including three separate scenes of an artificial kneecap being removed, endless stabbings and so many sprays of arterial blood that the sets soon look like Jackson Pollock paintings. 
 
 As Remy, Jude Law looks as if he has ringworm and is trying very hard to remember when he made movies like “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” As Jake, Forest Whitaker amiably confirms that, no, there is absolutely nothing he will not do. 
 
 There are a few moments of pleasure, thanks to Liev Schreiber as the repo men’s boss. Schreiber, clearly, knows this is offal; he also knows that, if he wants to support his family, even hit Broadway plays sometimes aren’t enough. 
 
 But he’s a pro, so even as he earns his paycheck, he does so with some style and wit. 
 
 Those are certainly rare commodities in this movie, which sacrifices subtlety for the obvious, and originality for the tried-and-true — or, more often, the tried-and-trite. And a last-minute, pull-the-rug-out ending, far from being significant, is only the last in a long line of copouts. 
 
 Full of over-the-top violence and misogynist caricatures (including a nagging wife so horrendous even her own son Tasers her), it’s a film to be endured more than experienced. It succeeds on one level though, even in spite of itself: It makes at least one clear-cut case for repossession. 
 
 Taking back the union cards of everyone involved. ||||| How many ways can a grown person waste valuable time and lose vital I.Q. points at the same time? If you’re a movie critic, the possibilities are unlimited. And they all come together in a new chunk of junk called Identity Thief. 
 
 IDENTITY THIEF ★ 
 
 (1/4 stars) Written by: Craig Mazin 
 
 Directed by: Seth Gordon 
 
 Starring: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy and John Cho 
 
 Running time: 111 min. 
 
 In the trashy, stupefying screenplay by Craig Mazin, Jason Bateman is a Denver accountant named Sandy Patterson—another in a long line of victims of the increasingly dangerous world of cyber-crime—whose credit card has been hacked and copied by a felonious thief in Miami (cacophonous, tractor-sized Melissa McCarthy). Now there are two Sandy Pattersons—an innocent fraud victim on one side of the country facing bankruptcy and a screeching, humongous creep on a marathon shopping spree on the other side of the country who is running up thousands of dollars in charges and wrecking her victim’s credit rating in the process. The police do nothing, the male Sandy loses his job and faces jail time, and the only solution is to devise a plan to apprehend the fake, female Sandy and drag her from Florida back to Colorado to turn herself in and clear his good name. In order to stretch a five-minute idea into 107 minutes of contrived drivel some people may mistake for plot, the plan backfires. She beats him up, steals his wallet, wrecks his rental car and leaves him stranded on the highway in a pair of pants stolen from a dead hobo. With no identification or money, he gets arrested for assaulting an officer, drug dealing and illegal gun possession. And still, against all odds, they hit the road to Colorado pursued by killers, bounty hunters and “skip tracers,” who track down crooks who owe money to gangsters, jump parole and get involved in other intrigues invented by hack Hollywood screenwriters. The snafus in the worst road movie since The Guilt Trip plunge Mr. Bateman and his female hippo into a motel with only a double bed, a grotesque sex scene with a pickled reprobate she picks up in a bar who demands a threesome, a violent bar fight that bloodies his nose, a kidnapping, a multi-car collision going the wrong way on the freeway … but why go on? They seem to be making it up as they go along, in a movie that threatens never to end. 
 
 By the time they got lost in the woods and fall into a den of hissing snakes, Elvis has long since left the building. Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) is a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success. Poor Jason Bateman. How did an actor so charming, talented, attractive and versatile get stuck in so much dreck? Identity theft is a real plague that is happening so often that people tremble every time they approach an ATM. It’s a deserving subject that should be explored in a more viable film, but Identity Thief is so bad it’s hard to believe it wasn’t directed by Judd Apatow or the Farrelly Brothers.
– Repo Men, a sci-fi thriller about men who repossess organs, is probably supposed to be biting commentary on divisive issues like health care, but critics are united in shouting it down: “Let the 2010 Razzies race begin!” declares Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter. “Blood soaked, derivative and increasingly ridiculous,” Repo Men is an “in-your-face mess that never knows what it wants to be when it grows up” and telegraphs its plot twists “a century in advance." On paper, the cast—Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber—looks great, but this “heartless piece of hack work” demeans them, writes Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. “Note to studio: get a soul transplant.” The movie “sacrifices subtlety for the obvious, and originality for the tried-and-true—or, more often, the tried-and-trite,” writes Stephen Whitty of the Star-Ledger. “It’s a film to be endured more than experienced.” Roger Ebert can’t figure out if the film’s supposed to be a comedy. When Law decapitates three people with one swing of a hacksaw, he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, “what are people supposed to think? Is this an action scene, or satire? Does it make any difference?”