Screen Spotlight

Repo Men is one of the most harrowing movies released in years. It is bone chilling and truly sickening to watch. After several near regurgitative stomach impulses and a reflexive urge to close my eyes I trudged through until the end. There are some movies that lose their meaning and essence when watched at home on DVD. This is why if you are a fan of futuristic movies, dystopian tales and horror itself you must watch Repo Men in the theater and late at night.

     Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are repo men working for a corporation simply known as "The Union" which is responsible for reclaiming vital organs that have gone unpaid for. Rather than trust the unpredictable and agonizingly slow transplant list ordinarily offered at hospitals, patients/customers can choose to purchase life saving organs from The Union. Unfortunately prices range from six hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars. Being as sinister as any credit card corporation can be in certain circumstances, if a customer falls behind on payments their organs can be repossessed. A repo man will be sent to their home or hide out to carve the organ from their insides and tear it out at the expense of their life. This makes The Union essentially godlike. It has the power to save life and the power to destroy it.

     Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are partners in crime, so to speak. They earn a handsome living repossessing organs. They are both militarily educated, and have always worked together as best friends and as partners. Unfortunately, Law’s wife Carol (Carice Van Houten) is not thrilled with the notion that her husband is by proxy a murderer. She threatens him with a divorce and a separation from his child should he not accept a sales position instead of field work.

     Before continuing the narrative, it is important to say that Forest Whitaker is terrifying. He is an absolute beast, a monster, and he plays a villain unlike anyone else. He is simply cold, calculating and abhorrent. Out of jealousy and possibly twisted love he convinces Law to perform one last job on a famous rock star whose organs must be repossessed at the expense of his life. Whitaker dastardly reversed the charge on the heart resuscitation device to cause Law’s heart to stop. He wakes up weeks later in the hospital attached to a brand new mechanical organ courtesy of The Union. The price is no object ordinarily for someone as productive as Law is as a repo man. In a twist of fate, he suddenly has a heart and a conscience and is incapable of killing ever again. Perhaps it is his true self being unveiled, or the mechanical heart allowed his conscience to rule his will and decisions. Either way, just like anyone else, Law has 94 days to repay his debt or he will be killed.

     The procedures shown in Repo Men are state of the art and are quite fascinating, albeit painful and terrifying to watch. Welcome to Obama Care where the cheapest procedure is what you will have with single-payer universal health care. Everyone gets a certain piece of the pie because to have more, even if you are willing to pay for it will be "unfair" to everyone else, who your tax dollars are supporting. Digression aside, Carol decides her husband is no longer good enough and both discards him martially and forbids him from being with his son. Law’s life is in complete chaos and he cannot seem to make ends meet.

     As the deadline approaches he unites with Beth (Alice Braga), another runaway evading The Union’s detection in the decaying part of the city away from the big beautiful high rises and futuristic highways. Together they make an incredible stand until Whitaker is assigned to bring his best friend "to justice". He is just the right repo man for the job as it is revealed he was the culprit and behind-the-scenes villain who caused the heart attack. He did it to ensure his partner would never leave the profession or become soft. Revealing any more of the plot would risk spoiling everything. Sufficed to say every second is thoroughly electrifying.

     All prognostications aside, all politics aside, taking Repo Men as a movie and nothing more, it is really frightening. It is a horror movie. The details of the carving of human flesh and the repairs made surgically made me come close to gagging and vomiting. I am not naturally squeamish watching horror pictures but this movie did the trick. I am still sick over the messages, the procedures and the concept behind financing organs. The storyline makes sense and the acting is grade A, but the plot is really so sinister I am rendered speechless. Should we fear for the future? Changing health care in the freest nation on Earth permanently and because some politicians who are making billions and having permanent health care, the best for all of their families, is indeed a perverse proposition. Repo men is really more of a start to the debate that has seemingly not even occurred. Is it relevant? It may be "futuristic" but the concept is here, we have all thought about it, so what will happen? How will the history of medicine unfold here in America? Good question.