Repo Men

Repo Men Film
Dir: Miguel Sapochnik
lhr51mins (18)
Violent thriller with
J tide Law



The 1984 film Repo Man starred Harry Dean
Stanton and Einilio Estevez as a couple of loan
sharks who repossessed cars from owners who had
defaulted on their payments. More than a quarter
of a century later, we have the "nasty, unimaginative
and absurdly violent" Rcf>o Men, said Philip
French in The Observer. It is perhaps a comment on
our times that the two men (played by Jude Law
and Forest Whitakcr) now forcibly remove organs
from transplant patients who have failed to pay
their bills. What was Law thinking appearing in
this "shockingly dumb" film, asked Henry


Fitzhcrbert in the Sunday Express. In one fell swoop he has blown away the goodwill he accrued
with his acclaimed Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes. As a satire or black comedy, Miguel
Sapochnik's movie might have worked, but instead it is a "grisly, insultingly idiotic calamity".
Sapochnik certainly seems unsure whether he's making "a dystopian allegory or a very sweaty,
testosterone-driven action movie", said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. Yet the acting is
seriously good. Law and Whitaker are first-class and Liev Schreiber "excels" as their thoroughly
cynical boss.