A Repo Man's Musing on Repo Men

Most of you know me but for those of you who don’t I will elaborate upon my nomenclature. My name is Brendan Murphy and I have been a Repo Man since September of 2008. That was when I first donned my homemade mask and picked up a scalpel to sing my way through the world of GeneCo and The Genetic Opera. Since then I have traveled from New York City to Boston, Mass., and Greenbelt, Maryland; from Rutherford, New Jersey to Toledo, Ohio and Los Angeles. I’ve had long conversations about Repo with Terrence Zdunich, Darren Smith, Darren Bousman and even Joe Motherfucking Bishara. I’ve been a member of three shadowcasts and an active Repo Army member, so much so that I’m past the point of broke because of the dedication I put in to making sure that Repo! The Genetic Opera reaches its full potential and gets the public attention that it deserves and has earned.

Aside from my involvement in the Repo Army I style myself a freelance writer. I’m the process of writing a few short stories and one extraordinarily long one. I’ve also studied film, literature, history and sociology. I say all of this not in order to toot my own horn but to explain my credentials before I delve into my critique of Repo Men because I feel like these credentials may lend it some credence instead of just being the ramblings of a die hard fan. With that I shall begin.

Let me make one thing clear, I am not a fan of idea theft or plagiarism in any way, shape or form and anyone who calls themselves a writer and yet still plagiarizes or abides plagiarism should be burned at the stake. That being said, saying that Eric Garcia (author of Repossession Mambo) committed idea theft from Repo Opera is an appalling insult to the Opera and all of its fans and creators. Mr. Garcia is nothing but a second rate author who should go back to writing for the “Weekly World News”, as I’m sure Bat Boy misses him.

The script was like a bad joke, full of meaningless banter spoken in hushed and serious tones to try and give it an air of deep philosophical meaning. That plan was foiled and this time its failure had nothing to do with those meddling kids or their stupid dog. There is no excuse for poor writing and there is no excuse for making a bad movie out of poor writing. Universal Pictures, I thought you would have learned that lesson from Waterworld. That was poorly written and just all around bad and I LIKED THAT MOVIE. My father taught me when I was young that can’t put lipstick on a pig and call it a woman; it’s still just a pig. I’m waiting for the day that Hollywood learns that but if movies like Repo Men keep coming out I think I’ll have a long time to wait. So listening to the back and forth banter between Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whittaker) was simply mind numbing. Jake’s undying mantra of “A job is a job,” isn’t only a cliché sack of horseshit but it makes the end of the movie completely unbelievable. It detracts from the best fight scenes and most amusing part of the movie. Basically with five small words they turned the last forty-five minutes into just buffer time before they roll the credits and that’s forty-five minutes I could have spent waxing my back or listening to nails scratching a chalk board. I don’t think I can honestly say enough bad things about the script. Now I haven’t read the book and I will agree with anyone who says that movies adapted from books are usually awful but if the director has half a brain then it can at least turn out decent. This is not the case for Repo Men. No, instead they gave the movie to a director who never directed anything that anyone has ever heard of. Sure he was the coffee guy for the art department of Trainspotting that must mean he can direct! WRONG. So call me insensitive, call me a prick, this is my don’t care face. I’m tired of second rate writers producing third rate books that get turned into shitty movies directed by people who should go back to running coffee. Hey, Mr. Largo, I’ve got a new gofer for you and his name is Miguel Sapochnik.

So let me ask you, if you’ve just written a book that is going to be turned into a major movie and they hand you the script would you cut out most of your book in the interest of giving Jude Law more screen time? Answer: Fuck No! You put as much as you can into it and only cut the filler stuff out. Garcia made this world on paper and was given the chance to show it on screen and he shit the bed. The allusions to a war that is never explained, the ten seconds of not explaining what Q is and no reasoning why the whole world now needs organ transplants are just a few of the short comings of Repo Men. It was too much like the 1995 incarnation of Brave New World where they left out too much of the cynical undertone and put in place a more hopeful and light hearted feel. Take away the emotion of the written word and all you have left is Repo Men. An emotionless and pedantic film that thought it could but really couldn’t, the little engine is rolling in his grave.

I have to at least try and say something nice about this film; after all there are always two sides to every coin. Unfortunately when I try to think of a good thing the only two words that come to mind are Jude and Law. He may have had a shitty script and lacking co-stars but I have to admit that the man showed class and how good of an actor he really is. He breathed life into an otherwise flat and broken character and he did it well. Remy was still an awful character but that’s just because Jude Law isn’t a miracle worker.

Back to the bad, I’m gonna do a quick rundown of the rest of the movie. The setting was too illogically put together to be believable. Dark urban one second and the next it’s a bright suburb with no transition in between. It was too awkwardly edited. The antagonist was The Union, an evil company providing artificial organs for exorbitant prices. While the comparison to GeneCo is uncanny there is a huge flaw in the dynamic of The Union as an entity. The Union has no reason. There is never an explanation for The Union’s existence. No outbreak of organ failures, no pandemic, just nothingness. It’s just something that would have been nice to know so that someone other than Eric Garcia could understand what was going on. At least with GeneCo they made it well known that there was an epidemic of organ failures that facilitated the necessity of GeneCo. Another thing that bothered me was the completely arbitrary love story that just so happened to be one of the most patchwork love stories that I’ve ever seen. It must have been an afterthought by the studio just because they wanted Jude Law to have some steamy scenes while cutting his lover open. It was just disgustingly unnecessary.

I can’t say that I know too much about the making of movies. Obviously I don’t because I’ve disagreed with the creation of dozens of movies that ruin the books they were based off of. One thing I do know though is story and plot lines. Hollywood has a tendency to recycle plot lines with a frequency so surprising that they must not think we’re going to notice. A remake of Repo! The Genetic Opera was inevitable, the fact that it just so happened to be less than a year after the original release is just a blatant insult. I’m not going to go into the differences or similarities between Repo Opera and Repo Men. This critique isn’t about that, the points are too obvious, this about yet another cookie-cutter movie being thrown through Hollywood and into the eyes of a public that is too tired to fight it anymore. The only thing I can really say is that Repo Men was an awful movie. The rest of the words are just fluff in order to make this an enjoyable thing to read. You want to know why Repo Men was a really bad movie, go and see it. I found it online because I wasn’t about to pay for it. It kept me occupied at work for two hours and I still wish that I was busy enough there that I didn’t have the time to watch it. When Hollywood starts putting out original movies and stops stealing the thoughts and idea of everyone else then I may regain faith in the movie industry. Until then I wipe my hands of the bullshit that is Hollywood and Repo Men.