Repo Men

Forest Whittaker and Jude Law. Dark, gritty, well put together, and imaginatively done. And with a hell of a twist ending - and not in the Shyamalan sense of a plot twist, either. I have to say that its refreshing to see a film with a legitimately unexpected ending pulling a complete 180 from where it had been going. I wont spoil it for anyone reading this, but it was certainly well done. The film itself was well shot, well cast, and made very human characters despite the plot being fairly linear, and if not predictable, somewhat unsurprising.

For my part, I prefer the film Repo: The Genetic Opera, which preceeded Repo Men by two years. That preference may come down to my own propensity for dark comedy, especially because of the addition of musical numbers to it. A musical or operatic style can make even the darkest, bloodiest topics funny. Both films have the same general premise, of a short time in the future where organ transplants and replacements have become the province of capitalistic mega corporations entirely. If you can afford the payments, then you get to live. But if you can't, and you default on the payment plans, then the Repo men come out to play, and then its up to you. They can be polite about it, at least - they are legally required to ask if you want an ambulance called to be on standby. That doesn't change the fact that without the organ that's being repossessed, you probably wont survive until the ambulance arrives, but it is nice of them to give the option (Sort of).

But as the Repossessions continues, the Repo men themselves find themselves in the position of having to repossess someone too close to themselves to cut what they need away from them. In The Genetic Opera, its his daughter. In Repo Men, its one of the Repo Men himself, after an on-the-job accident caused him to require the services of his own corporation. The genetic Opera came first, and seems to be much of the source for the plot of the second but the similarities are somewhat interesting.

Altogether, it was a pretty good movie. Good characters interspersed with good action scenes, well shot and well put together. Bloody, I warn you, though that's not at all unexpected. But altogether, pretty good.