Repo Men

The sci-fi thriller, Repo Men, gets off on a slow start, but we have to give the movie some time to find its groove and establish its premise: In the near future, people can live longer, thanks to the Union, that is a manufacturer of artificial organs and body parts.

The movie has a catch and the catch is that parts don't come cheap. If you fall behind on your payments, the Union tracks you down, slices you open and takes their parts back, leaving the customer dead.

The first half of Repo Men was written by Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner and the debut of the director of Repo Men, Miguel Sapochnik, is somewhat confusing. There's no one on screen that you can root for, and certainly not Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker), who taunt their victims and brag about their collections of organs, while their boss (Liev Schreiber) counts the money. They are repellent, disliked characters no amount of movie-star popularity can overcome.

Around the film's midpoint, when circumstances force one of the Repo Men to consider the other side of their profession, things change. In the best way possible, the movie goes insane. Remy discovers he can plug headphones into the ear of a singer (Alice Braga) he has a crush on and all the social commentary and satire about the health-care system and economy is dropped by the Repo Men.

Repo Men becomes more outrageous and livelier, the less seriously the filmmakers treat their premise. Also the film pays tribute to the inspiration of the "Live Organ Transplants" segment from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

Repo Men ends up finding its own weird, crazy vibe, which is a dark, gory vision of the future leavened with cracked humor, and a daring spirit.

Although Repo Men isn't exactly Oscar-quality, it's rated as a B-movie with all the sheen and gloss big-budget Hollywood can offer.