Review of Repo Men (2010) by Chads — 23 Mar 2010

Remy(Jude Law) is no romantic; no Parisian/Montmarte poet dreaming about a comely courtesean named Satine, as he hunts and pecks at a manual typewriter. He's not writing "Your Song"; he's writing about your kidney, your liver, your heart.

Remy is a repo man, a murderer. If this futuristic government organized a tribunal for the medical crimes perpetrated by these blue collar killers, both Remy and Jake(Forrest Whitaker), and others like them in "The Union", would no doubt utilize the Nuremberg Defense(the glee in which the repo men go about liquidating a ship seems very Nazi-like), since they were only following the directives from their boss Frank(Liev Schreiber).

Unwilling to take his wife's advice about taking a new position in the company, Remy, nevertheless, becomes nearly human again after a near-death experience. While on a job(he shows up at the house of a composer who is late on a payment for his heart), Remy finally faces the music when an occupational accident leads to an organ outfitting of his own.

With his humanity restored through addition by subtraction, the "heartless" repo man can no longer laugh at delinquent clients who "Cry [Him] a River" at collection time. As Remy hears this Etta James song a second time, performed by a lounge singer/prostitute(?) named Beth(Alice Braga), he receives the lyrics like poetry, without the veneer of his profession's cooptation back at the nightclub, where the credo "a job is a job" was uttered.

During a routine sweep with Jake, the repo man uses his stun gun on a child, but he can't finish the job. Unlike Chan-wook Park's "Boksuneun naui geot"("Old Boy" is not the only Park film that gets referenced), this young boy is spared the scalpel.

Although "Repo Men" degenerates into pure spectacle near the end, it climaxes with a spectacular display of masochism, clearly, a loving homage to Korean film, in which Remy and Beth consumate their love(for each other and for humanity) through pain.