Starts off as a knockoff Verhoeven, tongue-firmly-in-cheek with its flippant approach to a frankly incredible premise, devolves into a cliche-ridden actioner with the structural integrity of the World Trade Centre circa September 2001. You had such a good thing going! Why did we turn this into every other cookie cutter dystopian film? "Viva la revolución" and all that jazz, but it's quite a jarring tonal shift to go from a morbid and snarky satire of the healthcare industry under capitalism to a mediocre thriller straddling the line between self-seriousness and pure irony.
The film never loses said snark but it ends up playing second fiddle in the back half to a generic resistance plot and passable action sequences that rarely, if ever, rise to greatness. I recognise that the Oldboy hallway fight scene reference is a little underwhelming in retrospect, but I'm a sucker for violence in confined spaces and Repo Men does a pretty good job at paying homage.
Repo Men goes to some strangely sicko places that you simply wouldn't expect for a studio action film of this size. Little girls performing gruesome surgery because their small hands are very steady for precise incisions, people dying in comically exaggerated ways like when Jude Law dropped a typewriter onto a guys head and his brains splatter all over the floor, and my personal favourite sicko sequence, the Cronenbergian body horror sex scene where Jude Law and Alice Braga basically fuck each others' wounds. The film caps off on a bleak final note — one last brutal gag that delivers justice to its core messaging — the system wins, even in death.
There's a lot to appreciate here but an equal amount of shit to revile. Oh well!
Starts off as a knockoff Verhoeven, tongue-firmly-in-cheek with its flippant approach to a frankly incredible premise, devolves into a cliche-ridden actioner with the structural integrity of the World Trade Centre circa September 2001. You had such a good thing going! Why did we turn this into every other cookie cutter dystopian film? "Viva la revolución" and all that jazz, but it's quite a jarring tonal shift to go from a morbid and snarky satire of the healthcare industry under capitalism to a mediocre thriller straddling the line between self-seriousness and pure irony.
The film never loses said snark but it ends up playing second fiddle in the back half to a generic resistance plot and passable action sequences that rarely, if ever, rise to greatness. I recognise that the Oldboy hallway fight scene reference is a little underwhelming in retrospect, but I'm a sucker for violence in confined spaces and Repo Men does a pretty good job at paying homage.
Repo Men goes to some strangely sicko places that you simply wouldn't expect for a studio action film of this size. Little girls performing gruesome surgery because their small hands are very steady for precise incisions, people dying in comically exaggerated ways like when Jude Law dropped a typewriter onto a guys head and his brains splatter all over the floor, and my personal favourite sicko sequence, the Cronenbergian body horror sex scene where Jude Law and Alice Braga basically fuck each others' wounds. The film caps off on a bleak final note — one last brutal gag that delivers justice to its core messaging — the system wins, even in death.
There's a lot to appreciate here but an equal amount of shit to revile. Oh well!
