This is a film whose entire storyline – as slim as it is – seems to have been inspired by a sketch in Monty Python's MEANING OF LIFE, which has a sketch of a pensioner losing their liver to a couple of repossession men. Well, those men are brought to life in this futuristic thriller which fills its running time with gobbets of surgical gore and a man-on-the-run narrative that will be overly familiar to even the most intermittent of modern film viewers. Jude Law is cocky and rather irritating as a brutish, cold-hearted rent collector type who finds himself on the run when his former colleagues turn against him.
The look and feel of the film is very similar to Spielberg's MINORITY REPORT, albeit with a lower budget, and it's clear that there are some major problems here. The whole thing takes nearly an hour to get going before it starts to pick up momentum and become interesting, and then it seems to finish all too quickly. Also, for a movie advertised as an action thriller, it's rather light on the action; a stunning, OLDBOY-inspired corridor fight at the climax helps to make up for this, but it's not quite enough. And don't get me started on the absolutely stupid twist ending, which sucks out all the visceral enjoyment the viewer has just taken from the production.
Despite the flaws and general coldness of the production, it's difficult to dislike REPO MEN. It's clear that this was written and created by young, slightly immature men content to riff on previously explored topics rather than delivering genuinely innovative product, but it still delivers on a superficial level; you want to know what happens next, and the thrills satisfy. The cast are perfunctory: Alice Braga and Liev Schreiber make virtually no impact in highly predictable supporting roles, and while Forest Whitaker gets a little more of a look in, even he doesn't get a great deal to work with. Law, meanwhile, plays it off-hand and it doesn't work; he needed to be much more tortured for a role like this. It's not bad as it stands, but it could have been a whole lot more with some real maturity applied to the premise.
