Under no circumstances should you confuse Repo Men with Repo Man. Sure, they both feature fair-haired actors whose characters repossess things for a living. But one is a fun cult flick from the ‘80s with Emilio Estevez. The one I’m reviewing here is a stale and somewhat repugnant sci-fi concoction starring Jude Law.

In 2025 people can purchase artificial organs engineered by a corporation, but they’re really expensive. Fail to keep up with the payments on them and the company sends in specialists like Law to take them back. Circumstances eventually force Law on the lam from his employer. Sounds a lot like Repo! The Genetic Opera, I know, but it’s based on a book by co-screenwriter Eric Garcia.

The film’s not totally awful. I liked Forest Whitaker as Law’s childhood buddy and work partner, Liev Schreiber works well as their bureaucratic boss, and the fight scenes, like the one near the end where Law takes out a capable crew of corporate security men, are cool to watch. There’s also a nice scene early on where Law waits for his favorite musician to finish a song before repossessing his heart.

But as a whole the thing just feels tired. There’s no urgency, no tension, no excitement. For that I blame the listless direction by Miguel Sapochnik. In addition, buckets of blood are spilled for no discernible reason. Particularly grotesque is the part where Law scans in the past due organs of himself and his on-the-run companion (Alice Braga).

The supposed moral of the story is that Law has a change of heart, figuratively as well as literally. Yet he never really seems that bad to begin with, and so I never understood why he would be involved in such mean-spirited work. Law does a decent job nonetheless, and obviously worked out for the role. But the movie itself is in pretty bad shape. – [DVD]

Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 7/27/10

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