Review of Repo Men (2010) by Andre B — 14 Feb 2011

The concept of Repo Men is interesting, Law and Whitaker are both really capable actors, but the script is horrible, the direction is completely uninspired and the gore is excessive, actually not excessive, I don't believe there's such a thing as excessive gore, more like, completely and utterly unnecessary. It's set in the future when organs can be actually bought on credit, but they can also be repossessed should the payment not be met. And by repossessed I mean that if you don't pay for three months a Repo Man will come to your house shoot you, open you up, take the organ back and leave. Not even kidding.

I just don't know what Repo Men wanted to be, I really don't, it takes itself super seriously with the music and the chases, shit, I don't know, I just didn't get it for what it tried to be, a case could be made that if the world was actually like that this film would be a satire, because it takes themselves so seriously that it is funny, the amount of gore is truly too much, so much in fact that it's funny to see, and the actors in the midst of all this ridicule act it all out as though they were in a Victorian drama.

And I do think that the director ultimately approached this as a satire, I sure as hell hope he did, and it's a decision that, if that's actually the decision he took, I won't criticize at all, I think it was the right way to do this one, but the fact is that it doesn't act as though it knew it were a satire, it treats itself seriously, and gets bogged down with stupidly excessive action sequences and at one point even tries to be emotional. And emotional it's not, unless you count anger because you wasted a couple of hours of your life on it. I am, however, giving it a barely passing grade, because at least the premise was interesting, and the film could have been too, had its director and script not let us down.

Grade: C-.