Liver let die - Entertainment, Movies - Air Force Times

Liver let die

If you’ve ever bought something on credit that you really couldn’t afford and then got a little queasy thinking about whether you could make the payments, you’ll get a twisted thrill from “Repo Men.”

It’s a futuristic thriller that takes a decidedly contemporary theme — how corporate America has turned us into a nation of credit-card junkies hooked on easy debt — and spins it out to its wildest imaginable endpoint.

“If you can’t pay for your car, the bank takes it back. If you can’t pay for your house, the bank takes it back. If you can’t pay for your liver … well, that’s where I come in,” says Remy (Jude Law).

What? Your liver? Yep, or maybe one of any number of other high-tech artificial organs — “artiforgs” — manufactured by the monolithic corporation known as the Union (“Helping you get more you out of you”).

In a not-too-distant future that looks like a slightly more polished version of the world portrayed in “Blade Runner,” Remy is a “repo man,” working on commission for the Union and its oily huckster boss (Liev Schreiber) to hunt down recipients of these miracle machines who can’t cover the nut.

That would be most people, as the Union well knows, since it’s a very deliberate component of their business model. In one scene, a dying schlub is offered a pancreas for $618,000 — and an easy line of credit at 19.6 percent annual interest.

Remy and his lifelong pal Jake (Forest Whitaker) are the Union’s top repo men, happily snagging overdue artiforg owners and slicing them open on the spot to yank out the Union’s goods.

But discord is brewing for this dynamic duo; Remy’s hard-edged wife (Carice van Houten), has been hounding him to shift to a sales job so he won’t have to work such crazy hours and come home every night with blood spatters all over his uniform.

Jake thinks that’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard, but Remy seriously considers it — until fate intervenes. While out on a job one night, some faulty electrical equipment gives Remy a shock strong enough to require a heart transplant. And guess who supplies the heart?

At first, Remy is determined to pay for his new gift, even though that pushes his marriage off the cliff. But then he realizes that his heart literally is no longer in his work — for along with his artificial ticker, he’s acquired a genuine conscience.

Without any commissions, there’s no way Remy can pay for his artiforg. And suddenly, he knows all too well how it feels to be on the other side of a repo man’s taser.

The extended flight-and-fight sequence that consumes most of the movie’s second hour is a textbook primer in how to gradually ratchet up the tension and stakes in a story like this.

It culminates in a hand-to-hand melee between Remy and about a dozen Union goons, one so gushingly splatterific that the audience at my screening could do nothing but laugh in stunned amazement.

It’s so out there that even within the acknowledged unreality of the film, it feels like a “jump the shark” moment. Yet there’s a method to the madness of director Miguel Sapochnik and writers Garrett Lerner and Eric Garcia, adapting Garcia’s novel, “The Repossession Mambo.”

But I can’t tell you about it without giving away a cool ending, one that even this jaded octoplexian never saw coming.

Admittedly, the story requires some large leaps of logic. For example, this society appears to have no traditional law enforcement, since the Union’s repo men break and enter private homes at will and assault their targets with utter impunity.

But then, it’s not meant to be taken literally. “Repo Men” is not for everyone — and definitely not for the squeamish — but it is a slick sci-fi/fantasy parable that may make you think twice the next time you feel like whipping out the plastic.

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Rated R for extreme violence and language. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.