Repo Men

Repo Men
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Miguel Sapochnik
Produced by	Scott Stuber
Screenplay by	Eric Garcia Garrett Lerner
Based on	The Repossession Mambo  by Eric Garcia
Starring	Jude Law Forest Whitaker Liev Schreiber Alice Braga Carice van Houten Chandler Canterbury RZA Yvette Nicole Brown
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Cinematography	Enrique Chediak
Editing by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Studio	Relativity Media Stuber Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	March 19, 2010 (2010-03-19)
Running time	111 minutes[1] 119 minutes (Unrated)
Country	United States Canada
Language	English Spanish
Budget	$32 million[2][3]
Box office	$18,409,891[3]

Repo Men is a 2010 American-Canadian science fiction action-thriller film directed by Miguel Sapochnik, and starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. It is based on the novel The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia.

Plot

In 2025, a corporation called "The Union" has perfected bio-mechanical organs. As they are very expensive customers usually buy them on credit terms. If a customer falls behind on payments, a "repo man" reclaims the artificial organ (artiforg). The repossession procedure frequently results in death. Remy and his partner Jake Freivald are considered the best of the Union's repo men. His livelihood causes issues between Remy and his wife, Carol.

Attempting to save his marriage by transferring to sales, Jake tells Remy that his last job should be a cardiac repossession. The repo requires the use of a defibrillator. The device malfunctions, and Remy is severely injured, requiring replacement of his heart with an artiforg.

Carol divorces Remy, so he moves in with Jake. In sales, he is unable to lie to potential customers about the consequences of non-payment. Remy is forced back into repo to pay for his heart, but has developed sympathy for his victims. Jake discovers that Remy has not been repossessing and takes him to a "nest" with enough artiforgs to clear his debt. However, Remy cannot do the job and a stunned debtor wakes up and knocks Remy out.

Waking up, Remy encounters Beth, who is past due on transplants. After a failed attempt to clear their accounts at the Union's local headquarters, they leave town. Remy decides to document his life as a repo man. As he works on a manuscript, he is interrupted by a repo man. Remy sets a trap and the collector drops through a hole in the floor. Beth falls through the same hole, damaging her prosthetic knee. Before the collector can shoot Beth, Remy manages to kill him.

Remy sneaks into his former workplace to obtain jamming devices that fool organ scanners. He attempts to force Frank, his former boss, to clear his account, only to discover that accounts can now only be cleared at the Union's central office. Remy and Beth attempt to flee the country at the airport, but security is alerted by bleeding from Beth's knee. A fight with airport security ensues. Jake finds them, but is on the wrong side of a security panel and watches their escape. A black market doctor replaces Beth's knee.

After the procedure, they are stopped by Jake who reveals he rigged the defibrillator unit so Jake would remain his partner. Remy stabs Jake's knee, Jake knocks Remy unconscious and Beth shoots Jake with his stun pistol.

Beth awakens Remy as an organ repossession raid is underway. They flee and Remy decides to delete the accounts of all implant clients. Remy passes his manuscript to his son during a meeting on a train.

Remy and Beth break into Union headquarters and fight their way through the facility to the Union's database. Using Beth's prosthetic eye, they enter and seal themselves inside as Jake and Frank arrive. The server's only interface is an organ scanner, requiring Remy and Beth to cut themselves open to use the scanner internally, clearing their accounts. Jake and Frank enter. Frank pulls a gun to kill Remy, but Jake kills him with a knife and deposits explosives inside the organ retrieval unit. The explosion destroys the mainframe, wiping the records of everyone who has an account with the Union.

Later, Remy is seen on a tropical beach, enjoying his freedom with Beth and Jake. His text has been published as a book, The Repossession Mambo. While Remy talks to Jake, he sees the beach flicker. It is revealed that Remy sustained brain damage when Jake hit him. Jake has paid Remy's account and placed him in a neural network, allowing him to live out his life in a dream. Beth is unconscious, and Jake says he will take care of her. The film ends with Frank delivering a sales pitch for the neural network.

Cast

• Jude Law as Remy, a repo man.
• Forest Whitaker as Jake Freivald, Remy's partner.
• Liev Schreiber as Frank Mercer, Remy's boss.
• Alice Braga as Beth, a singer who has multiple artificial organs.
• Carice van Houten as Carol, Remy's wife.
• Chandler Canterbury as Peter, Remy's son.
• RZA as T-Bone, a soul musician in debt.
• Yvette Nicole Brown as Rhodesia
• John Leguizamo as Asbury, a black-market organs dealer.
• Liza Lapira as Alva, a black-market surgeon's assistant.
• Joe Pingue as Raymond Pearl, Remy's co-worker sent out to repo his heart.

Production

In 2003 ^{[citation needed]}, screenwriters Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner began collaborating with Miguel Sapochnik on a screenplay based on a novel being written by Garcia. The novel, Repossession Mambo, was published March 31, 2009.

In June 2007, Universal Studios cast Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. Production began in September 2007.^[4] Casting for this film was done by Mindy Marin, production design by David Sandefur, art direction by Dan Yarhi, set decoration by Clive Thomasson, and costume design by Caroline Harris. Filming took place in Toronto, and the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario.^[5]

Fight choreography was done by Hiro Koda and Jeff Imada. Forest Whitaker has been a longtime student of Filipino Martial Arts under Dan Inosanto and it is featured heavily in the vicious blade and blunt-weapon fight scenes in film.^[6]

The score was composed by Marco Beltrami, who recorded his score with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.^[7]

Release

Repo Men was released theatrically in the United States and Canada on March 19, 2010, having been moved up from an original release date of April 2, 2010.^[8] The film was promoted with a seven-minute comic^[9] released on Apple.com on March 15, 2010.^[10]

The unrated DVD and Blu-ray Disc was released on July 27, 2010.^[11]

Reception

Critical response

The film received generally negative reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives a score of 22% based on 146 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2 out of 10. The site's consensus is that "Repo Men has an intriguing premise, as well as a likable pair of leads, but they're wasted on a rote screenplay, indifferent direction, and mind-numbing gore."^[12]

Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, has a rating score of 32% based on 31 reviews.^[13]

Box office

Repo Men opened at #4 in its debut weekend in North America with US$6,126,170 in 2,521 theaters, averaging US$2,430 per theater. The film eventually grossed US$17,805,837 worldwide—US$13,794,835 in North America and US$4,011,002 in other territories.^[14] In July 2010, Parade Magazine listed the film as the #7 on its list of "Biggest Box Office Flops of 2010 (So Far)."^[15]

References

External links

• Official website
• Repo Men at the Internet Movie Database
• Repo Men at Box Office Mojo
• Repo Men at Rotten Tomatoes
• Repo Men at Metacritic