Sometimes, when it comes to making movies, coincidences happen. Take Armageddon and Deep Impact for instance. Both had similar premises and both came out around the same time. However, they are typically considered to be completely different movies that had nothing to do with one another.
Then there’s Repo Men. This movie, starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, is based on a book called The Repossession Mambo. However, the book (and subsequent film) have many people frothing at the mouth like ripoff-hating racoons. You see, back in the late nineties, there was a stage play called Repo! The Genetic Opera. It was about a futuristic world where people who require organ transplants could get them from a shadowy corporation, but if you missed your payments, repo men would come for you to “reclaim their property”. Sound familiar?
Anyway, the musical was turned into a movie in 2008, and now, people are calling bullshit on Universal for ripping it off. For the complete story and all the background details about the controversy, here is the story via the actors of the stage version of Repo! The Genetic Opera.
But controversy aside, how was Repo Men itself?
Well, it wasn’t bad, but definitely doesn’t have much replay value. The plot takes you exactly where you think it will (for the most part), and you can pretty much plot the storyline by the trailer. There was a lot of dark humour to compliment scenes of ripping open people in the backseats of taxis, though, as well as solid acting by Law and Whitaker. Scenes of hyper-violence seem a bit out of place, but for a movie about extracting organs from still-breathing bodies, it probably shouldn’t.
Having said all that though, this film really isn’t about organ repossession. Repo Men is dark satire, used effectively enough to say something about business vs. human life in the health care industry. I feel bad for people who watched the trailer and walk into this film expecting a futuristic, action-packed, thrill ride. For the most part, the film is actionless, unless you count scenes of slicing open flesh with a scalpel to be riveting. Sure there are a couple badass fighting sequences thrown in toward the end of the film, but all in all, this movie isn’t so much an action as it is a sci-fi with a message. Minus the vampires, it’s actually quite similar to the recent Daybreakers in a lot of ways: dark, futuristic society where sci-fi writers make you think big picture about the value of human life. With a couple moments of crazy gore for good measure.
Repo Men is not great, and definitely feels like the cobbling together of superior movies. Regardless, it is watchable and with morbid, little moments to appeal to the sick bastard/bastardess in all of us, it’s a good way to kill a couple hours. Ripoff or not.
