It’s coming to theatres on March 19, but is it possible you’ve already seen Repo Men? Multiple times? Or is that not true? Is it an original and exciting sci-fi adventure starring Jude “Still Hot” Law and Forest “Oscar” Whittaker?
Watch the trailer and let me know what you think…

The Movie: Repo Men (opening March 19)

The Buzz: Jude Law, guns, sexy ladies. Oh, and something about a future where sick people buy new organs from a corporation, then get them violently repossessed if they miss payments.

The Trailer:

The Review:

I’ve been through two phases with this trailer, which first came to my attention during Roommate Joe’s Spring Movie Preview. At first, I was stoked to see Jude Law looking so sexy-sex-sexy and proving that a receding hairline need not stop a man from being fine. Also, having just seen law on Broadway as Hamlet, I was pretty bullish on his talent as well as his looks, so… bonus.

After I cooled down, however, I watched the trailer again. Now I’m conflicted.

On one hand, you see, the preview itself is better than your average sci-fi spot. Rather than telling us what the movie is about up front, it teases us with information for thirty seconds. We know that something creepy is going on, we know that a company is collecting some kind of debt, but we don’t know exactly what it is for quite some time (relatively speaking.) You don’t always get storytelling that intriguing in a preview.

And then there’s the tone: The quick-cut editing and grittier-version-of-Beck electronica on the soundtrack tell us this movie is going to be cool, dark, and menacing. However, that tone is contrasted by Law’s sarcastic quips about people not taking care of their organs and Whitaker’s philosophical argument on why his job as a repo man is actually maintaining societal order. So which is it? Should we laugh or shudder? Should we nod in agreement or back away in disgust? By not making it clear, the trailer pulls us further into its teasing mystery.

Granted, things take a turn for the hoary in the second half, when Jude Law ends up with his own transplanted organ and starts running from the very organization he once worked for. But the opening of the trailer is so effective that I could almost look past that cliche…

… if it weren’t for the things the trailer can’t do. No matter how sleek and engaging it makes the movie seem, it can’t cover the fact that Repo Men plays like an obvious rip-off of both Repo! The Genetic Opera and Minority Report. The former is a 2008 movie musical about a company that sells organs and then sends repo men to collection them if people can’t make their payments. (It’s based on a stage musical from 2006.) Minus the music, it seems like it could actually be the Jude Law film, and if there haven’t been any lawsuits filed, then I assume there’s one cooking in some lawyer’s office somewhere.

Meanwhile, Minority Report is also a movie about a man who works in the not-too-distant future, terrorizing people to uphold an ethically shaky social order. (He arrests citizens moments before they commit murder, since a group of psychics can predict violent crimes before they happen.) Just like in Repo Men, the agent eventually has to flee from the very system he once defended.

Given this, can Repo Men be anything other than an example of Hollywood’s exhausted imagination? Can its style overcome a story that seems trite at best and plagiaristic at worst?

I don’t know. This movie does look entertaining and Jude is a hottie, but I fear that by watching it, I’ll be helping the studio system both chew up the little guys who made Repo! and pander to the audience that liked Minority Report.

What do you think?