So I really didn’t want to see this one but it came down to either this one or How to Train Your Dragon. And I’m now wondering why I didn’t choose the latter, although I did have some great laughs to carry me through with my decision. The tagline is priceless and really sums up the movie well; ‘For a price, any organ can be replaced. It can also be repossessed’. This movie ranked at number 9 this past weekend earning $3 million coming in behind Shutter Island and even the Green Zone. Leonardo DiCaprio was actually slated to star but thankfully he backed out because I think Jude Law’s charm can really let movies like this slide off of his career without making too much of a dent.
The plot is based on the novel The Repossession Mambo and stars Jude Law as a repo man working for The Union which sells life-saving organs at in inflated cost with sky-high interest rates to those in need. Law’s character is called in when the patients fall more than 90 days behind to ‘repossess’ the organs ultimately leaving the patients dying in their own pools of blood. The tables are turned when after a bad accident, Law finds himself the recipient of an artificial heart and he can’t keep up with the payments. He is then set on the other side of the business and goes head to head with his former best friend, Forest Whitaker, while taking solace in and coupling up with Alice Braga, another fugitive on the run.
This plot had more holes than not. I don’t think I can avoid putting some spoilers into this section but then again I really wouldn’t advise anyone to go out and see this movie anyway. Jude Law’s character first receives a very unbelievable super dose of morality following his surgery which just gives him a life-changing ideology on his whole frame work of prior beliefs which is just so perfect with the plot of the story yet extremely superficial. Not to mention the ‘surprise ending’ although they mentioned something interestingly important in the beginning and did not revisit the fact even though one of the characters even asks questions about it, only to bring it up in a surprise ‘Ta-Da’ ending! This isn’t to mention little inconsistencies such as the fact that nobody seems to bleed to death in the future, no matter what the internal damage is or people can apparently plug into someone else’s super hearing by attaching headphones to their bionic ears. Surprisingly this awesome ‘super power’ only came in partly handy at one instance in the movie. I could count on my hand the number of times that power would have been useful before my breakfast today. Also apparently in the future, it is super sexy to cut open your partner and not cause the anticipated excruciating pain, but instead an intense make-out session. I have one more real problem with the story but I will put it at the end of the review just in case the one person out there who is planning on seeing this movie just happens to stumble across my review.
The cinematography was gritty and very very bloody. This was some sort of super gross blood they used for this movie too, which surpasses the normal everyday splatter blood in most movies. The action sequences were fast paced and for the most part nicely choreographed. Although highly unrealistic, the hacksaw fight near the end was pretty innovative and entertaining to watch, blood spurting aside. I did enjoy the numerous rat pack songs used in the soundtrack which actually fit with the parts of the movie they were used.
The performances were good and not too over the top. I did like how Forest Whitaker’s character wasn’t just a one dimensional character who suddenly turns on his best friend but was played as a semi-complex character. Jude Law did good with the character and still looks great with his shirt off. He had some funny lines although the love interest aspect of the movie could have been left out. Live Schreiber was subtly humorous and was well cast for the part.
Overall, this was a movie that produced a lot of laughs and gross-out reactions. I think the novel may be a good read with the potential to raise questions about our own healthcare system and lending practices. Such as when Schreibers character complains when the patients pay in full because that’s not how they make the most money. This could be related to the criticism that healthcare companies want their patients to die quickly. There was almost a direct allusion to the lending failures of our own economy when they tout the low low initial APR of 19.99% of the organs and a plan to fit everyone, but in the end the movie just didn’t pull of any of the allusions or satirical comments it may or may not have been aiming at.
This movie was basically a bloody action movie. You have to be prepared to see very bloody depictions of numerous hands inserting and retrieving things from numerous body cavities. I would only recommend this to people who enjoy gory unrealistic action movies.
(I normally don’t mention the end of movies that I review but I had a real problem with the end of the movie. Even though I actually saw this one coming, it just didn’t add up and was obviously thrown in there just to have a surprise ending. The M5 was supposed to be a place where people live in a state of happiness for the rest of their lives. So with this in place, can someone explain why Jude Law’s character’s idea of paradise included him cutting himself open without anesthesia when the pink room could’ve just as easily contained a keyboard therefore eliminating the need for the self-mutilation . . .since it was all his version of happiness anyway?)
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