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Repo Men (2010)
It’s not unheard of for different writers to independently create similar projects. Remember back in 1998 when there were two animated bug movies and two apocalyptic asteroid flicks? Granted, those were big budget studio movies and the final films had little in common other than concept or premise. Repo Men takes place in a world where people open contracts on new organ transplants, but if the buyer is late on the payment then a repo man will come and take back the merchandise. This gory premise might sound familiar for fans of the Goth opera, Repo: the Genetic Opera, which was released a whole 18 months earlier. The makers of Repo Men and Repo have engaged in a he-said/she-said argument over who originated the idea. Repo Men‘s screenwriters claim they came up with the concept in 2003, though the book the film is based was only released in 2009. The Repo team point out that their funky little musical began as a theatrical show that was first performed in 2002. The songwriters behind Repo say that the idea itself goes back to 1999 and began as a 10-minute opera experiment. I suppose we’ll never know who really had the idea first, though I’m inclined to side with the Repo musical fellas because they can back up their claims with evidence. It seems like a whole lot of squabbling over so little, but hey, that’s Hollywood for you.
In the not-too-distant future, one corporation, The Union, seems to hold sway in the world of organ transplants. Remy (Jude Law) is an expert repossessions officer who will slice open anybody 90 days late on his or her payment. His wife wants him to transfer to sales; it’s less messy. Remy’s partner (Forest Whitaker) is an old childhood friend and doesn’t want to lose his butcher buddy. One night, Remy is sidelined by some malfunctioning equipment that fires his heart. He has no choice but to get his own organ transplant. Following the operation, Remy finds that he no longer has the stomach for his old line of work. Remy’s newfound moral compass comes at a cost. He quickly falls behind in his payments and his old bosses plead for Remy to refinance. Reluctantly, they sic the repo men, including Whitaker, on Remy to retrieve company property.
Repo Men takes some nice commentary on predatory lending, pushing the hard sell knowing that the customer can never stay ahead of the mounting fees and payments. The allegory has some sharp moments. However, the movie would have benefited from being pushed further in pretty much every regard. The side characters are horribly shallow. I’m fairly certain that Carice van Houten (electrifying in Black Book), as Remy’s beleaguered wife, could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout boasting a disapproving look. She gets to glare and complain and talk about family issues and then she’s gone, replaced entirely by Beth, a mysterious organ replacement junkie. Beth could have an intriguing back story, and the concept of surgery addiction could dwell upon the human cost of beauty and “upgrading,” but alas, her real purpose is to become an oddly implacable love interest for Remy. She gets to hold his hand while they run. That’s her main contribution (except for one key scene detailed below).
The entire concept of a future world held hostage by a greedy health care corporation could use more contemplation. What is happening with society? No epidemic is ever mentioned, so why do people start contracts on million dollar organs? Do the heavy debts pass on to the next of kin? What is the legality of organ repossession? What level of competition is there out there in the market? What does the government have to say about all this? Does this mighty company supersede the U.S. government? How come Remy can’t even get an employee discount on the merchandise? Has anybody had enough surgeries to become the six million dollar man? There is a wealth of questions born from this premise, but the movie only scratches the intellectual surface and sets its standard change-of-perspective morality storyline into gear. I actually would have found the life of an organ salesman to be more dramatically appealing. What kind of ethical rationalizations take place in the mind of a man who makes his living signing saps into modern indentured servitude? I find that story direction to be more compelling than following the guys who bring back the company merchandise.
But then something weird happens. The movie gallops to a satisfying close, and then it somehow gets even better in its closing moments. I was certain that I was going to write off Repo Men but then 4 things happened to make me sit up straight in my chair (I’ll refrain from any large spoilers):
1) In a film relentlessly aping the visuals of other, superior dystopian films, there’s not much new to look at. You’ve seen this future society thing before, just with more flying cars or jet packs. I came to terms with this; it’s not every movie that reinvents how we interpret the future short of some calamity. Then when Remy breaks into the Company HQ, which is awfully easy by the way, he stumbles into the genetic organ hatchery, if you will. Rows and rows and rows of scientists tinker with organ replacements. The entire environment is a strikingly sterile white, including the scientists wrapped in bulky white biohazard suits. Then Remy and Beth make a run for it, and they are covered head to toe in black. It’s a fabulous visual image, watching the color contrasts. It’s debut director Miguel Sapochnik’s high point.
2) Once Remy and Beth move beyond this laboratory, they get caught in a hallway, and Remy proceeds to take out a mob of employees. The fight sequence is several minutes long and a clear nod to the memorable extended hallway fight in Oldboy (Remy takes out a hammer as his final weapon). Weirdly, Remy’s opponents are suit types, middlemen, office employees, numbers crunchers, but they all leap into battle to take out the corporate intruder. The fight sequence is bloody and stylish enough to please the senses, like when Remy swings a hacksaw and we get Swinging Hacksaw POV as characters duck out of the way lest their jugulars get sliced.
3) Following this, Remmy and Beth must deposit their corporate-licensed organ replacements. This involves cutting each other open, taking a bar code scanner (think a grocery check-out), and digging inside each other to get those subcutaneous scans. What’s amusing is that the scene is blatantly juxtaposed as a sex scene; Remmy and Beth intimately penetrate each other, the editing cuts to close-ups of moaning, and the other tries to soothe the pain with physical assurances, and it’s all set to a slow jam. It’s something of a bizarre sequence, especially upon further review (how effective can scanning for bar codes be inside the gook-filled human body?), but man is it interesting.
4) Just as I had come to terms with the movie settling for a conventional conclusion, the movie pulls the rug out from under you. It offers up a last-minute ending that upends the conventional framework, and, actually, presents the easy coast to a conventional stop in a new light. This is one of those rare instances where a last-minute ending twist actually improved the film. More often than not, a last-second twist is forced and the nail in the coffin of lasting entertainment.
Repo Men is a competently looking, competently entertaining sci-fi thriller that miraculously stumbles into a final act that not only works, it elevates the rest of the movie. My mild boredom vanished and I started wondering why they made me wait so long for the good stuff. Repo Men is a mixed marriage of overall tone. One second it will be darkly humorous, the next it will be satirical, the next it will pine for serious drama, and occasionally it goes for Guy Richie-styled slapstick. A sequence where Remy describes the three occasions he’s been knocked out, with visual interludes, feels like a deleted scene from an entirely different movie. The movie never really settles, touching upon a lot of areas but mostly poorly. The script desperately needed to be fleshed out to make any lasting impact. Now that I’m living in a two-Repo world, I’ll probably stick with the campy musical fun of Repo: the Genetic Opera. At least that movie left you humming.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Black Book (2006)
If there’s one thing you can say about Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, it’s that his films are never boring. He’s shameless when it comes to the amounts of sex and violence he squeezes into his films, and this isn’t typical bouncy violence but cold, serious violence that manage to have whiffs of dark comedy to it. The sex is sleazy and ridiculous, often outpacing the late-night flesh peddlers on Cinemax. I don’t think Verhoeven knows how to do anything subtle, and frankly I wouldn’t want him to. The man is responsible for brawny sci-fi (Total Recall, Robocop), killer lesbians (Basic Instinct), the most subversive mainstream Hollywood movie of the modern era (Starship Troopers is pro-fascism, people), and the most surreal visual effect I have seen in my life – a breast groping itself (Hollow Man). Verhoeven even shows up in person to accept his Razzie award for Worst Director for 1995’s camp classic, Showgirls. This man doesn’t have an off switch. The man makes enjoyable movies, both intentionally and unintentionally.
It’s been a long six years since Verhoeven’s last film and in that time off he’s settled back into his homeland. Black Book (Zwartboek) is a tale loosely based around true stories involving the Dutch resistance in the Nazi-occupied occupied Netherlands. And if there is anyone that can throw in some sex with our good old-fashioned WWII violence, it is Paul Verhoeven.
Rachel (Carice van Houten) is a Jew hiding out in the Netherlands. She and her family is trying to pass out of the country by river when they are ambushed by the guns of a Nazi boat. Rachel is the lone survivor and watches all of her family members get mowed down. She joins the underground resistance movement to find out who betrayed her family. She dyes her hair blonde, both above and below the waist to be thorough, and cuddles up to a stamp-collecting S.S. leader, Ludwig Muntz (Sebastian Koch). She works her way into his trust and along the way uncovers a twisty conspiracy to trick rich Jews into ambushed escapes.
Black Book is skillfully made and pulpy enough to keep the viewer’s enjoyment level in a good place. From start to finish the movie presents enough trials and setbacks to keep an audience satisfied, and enough sex and violence to meet out the standard Verhoeven quota. Nazi occupation hasn’t been deeply explored from the Dutch point of view, and Verhoeven decides not to make everything so black and white. Muntz is a compassionate S.S. officer that wants to work negotiations with resistance fighters to stop further bloodshed. Rachel deeply falls for him, at the disgust of some of her fellow men at arms. On the other side of the coin, once the Nazis have been toppled there are several Dutch civilians and bureaucrats that can behave just as cruel. Those now with power strike out against those deemed to have sympathized and collaborated with German rule. Verhoeven is making a point that there was good and bad on both sides, which is admirable, though this point has been made better elsewhere. Black Book is filled with various twists and double-crosses, so the audience is involved until the very end. Plus, the sex and violence help too.
There’s terribly little below the surface when it comes to Black Book. It’s a thrilling, unabashedly entertaining movie but nothing beyond a sexed-up, suped-up version of a 1940s behind-enemy-lines potboiler. The characters have little to them beyond basic motivations like greed and lust and revenge, so it all can seem like an empty but high-spirited, fun-filled time at the movies. Verhoeven has never imbued his female roles with much characterization, more often showcasing them as ass-kicking vaginas on legs (whoa, now there’s a mental image for you). Another flaw is how Black Book is structured. We open on a tourist trip to Israel in 1954 and see Rachel teaching a class of schoolchildren. This colossal misstep drains the tension from whenever Rachel is in danger; we already know she has to survive to teach our little ones. [I]Black Book[/I] is a largely fictional take, a collection of various historical pieces and figures, so that means that the outcome for our heroine is not preordained. Rachel very well could die amidst her undercover infiltration, but alas the movie opening in flashback erases this threat.
Van Houten is an enticing screen beauty that brings to mind Hollywood stars of old. She has a very simple, prim, elegant look to her, and a presence that is coy and sensual but far from trashy or vulgar. This helps add traces of believability to a figure that does some incredible acts in the name of God and country. Hollywood would have cast Rachel as a tall, buxom bombshell, but it would all be wrong. If this girl turned heads she would be dead. Van Houten gets thrown through the wringer, and at one point literally shit upon, and she handles it with steely grit. The best moments are when we see how Rachel rebounds from setbacks, when she is forced to break from her resolve and think. Her first encounter with Muntz in a train car is a good example, but even better is how she reacts when Muntz accuses her of dying her hair and being a Jew. She grabs his hands and places them on her hips and finally rests them on her exposed breasts. “Are these Jewish?” she asks. She defuses the situation and lives another day, and it’s perfectly played by a nervous but nervy Van Houten. She makes two plus enjoyable hours even more enjoyable.
Black Book is clearly and fairly rated R, but part of its rating piqued my curiosity. One of the items that help push the film into the restricted rating is “graphic nudity.” Now, what exactly is graphic nudity? I recall last year’s Babel also getting an R-rating for what was deemed “graphic nudity.” One thing the two films have in common is that they both show quick glimpses of exposed female genitalia. I suppose that the MPAA feels that nudity becomes graphic when we see pubic hair. This confounds me. What about pubic hair turns nudity into an extra, more offensive category of nudity? At the end of the day, it’s just hair, people. I did some quick research and [I]Basic Instinct[/I], infamous for Sharon Stone’s career-making leg crossing, is rated R for mere “strong sexuality.” For the record, when Stone flashes her naughty bits they were bare. So let the record show that hair seems to be the qualifier between what is nudity and what is graphic nudity. Maybe I’ll write a dissertation on this some day.
As for another aside, how freaking cool is the name Zwartboek? It sounds like some fun term I’d come across in the pages of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Dutch language is a tad bizarre for my American ears; it’s sounds like a mixture of English and German, and sometimes it seems like a subtitled sentence is actually direct English. I know I can’t stop saying “zwatboek” around my home in place of gasps and curses.
Black Book is Verhoeven’s first Dutch language film in over 25 years, and it also feels like he’s enjoying movies again after his bad experiences across the Atlantic. I welcome more entertaining Dutch films from their favorite filmmaking son. He may not be he most subtle man behind a camera, but we already have plenty Terrence Mallicks and Gus van Sants to bring confounding contemplation to movies. We need more people like Vanhoeven who know how to please the sense, kick you in the balls, and make you grateful for the experience.
Nate’s Grade: B
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