Repo Men (2010)

So, could you ever actually picture Jude Law as an action hero? And I’m not talking about that polished guy from Sherlock Holmes—I mean a gritty, three-day-stubble, ass-kicking badass who tears through villains without breaking a sweat. You can't, right?
Well, surprise. Jude Law is stepping into that exact role in a brutal, bloody Sci-Fi thriller called Men in Black, hitting theaters in mid-April 2010. It's being directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who's mostly known for a single film called The Dreamer from 2000. Alongside Jude Law, we've got a heavy-hitting cast including Academy Award ® winner Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, RZA, Alice Braga, and Carice van Houten.
Judging by the trailer, it hits those same notes as classics like Minority Report, RoboCop, and Total Recall—think massive corporations pulling all the strings, heavy violence, dark humor, and a fugitive on the run. It also digs into consumerism and the terrifying reality of what happens when you can't pay your debts, where the consequences are way worse than just losing your house or car.
One interesting bit: Leonardo DiCaprio was originally lined up for the lead, but he dropped out for some reason, leaving the role to Jude Law.
Like I said, it drops in mid-April.



IMDB

Official site

TRAILER RED BAND
TRAILER

PLOT

Quote : Humans have extended and improved Our lives through highly sophisticated and expensive mechanical organs created by a company called The union
Jude Law plays Remy, one of the best organ repo men in the business. But when he suffers a cardiac failure on the job, he awakens to find himself fitted with the company’s top-of-the-line heart-replacement…as well as a hefty debt. But a side effect of the procedure is that his heart’s no longer in the job. When he can’t make the payments, The Union sends its toughest enforcer, Remy’s former partner Jak (Academy Award ® winner Forest Whitaker), to track him down.
Now that the hunter has become the hunted, Remy joins Beth (Alice Braga), another debtor who teaches him how to vanish from the system. And as He and jak embark on a chase across a landscape populated by maniacal friends and foes, one man will become a reluctant champion for thousands on the run.

IMAGES

Such an interesting concept...

I just watched the trailer and, honestly, the whole concept seems pretty stupid to me. If you don't pay up, they just show up and rip out your heart, or your kidney, or your liver... then what? Are they just going to leave you there to die?

BTW, Jude Law is a total star. 😁

crimsontrucker4 said:I just watched the trailer and, honestly, the whole concept seems pretty stupid to me. If you don't pay up, they just show up and rip out your heart, or your kidney, or your liver... then what? Are they just going to leave you there to die?

BTW, Jude Law is a total star. 😁

Yeah, right! Like you're actually gonna pay up now!

This sounds pretty interesting to me, especially since you can draw some parallels to today’s consumer culture and everyone constantly maxing out their credit cards. I wonder if people would still be swiping like crazy if the consequences were a bit more heavy-handed—not quite this extreme, obviously, but maybe like having your house or car automatically repossessed if those debts aren't settled on time.

Anthony Smith3 said:Yeah, right! Like you're actually gonna pay up now!

This sounds pretty interesting to me, especially since you can draw some parallels to today’s consumer culture and everyone constantly maxing out their credit cards. I wonder if people would still be swiping like crazy if the consequences were a bit more heavy-handed—not quite this extreme, obviously, but maybe like having your house or car automatically repossessed if those debts aren't settled on time.

I don't know, the whole concept feels a bit forced to me.
If they just focused more on the action and less on the deep philosophy, I think it would actually be great.

Haven't we already seen this one... ahem... Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

copperseal30 said:Haven't we already seen this one... ahem... Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Man, that movie was such a drag. I was honestly just counting down the minutes until the credits rolled.

Here are a few more posters designed to look like those old-school medical advertisements...



And a couple of "normal" ones...

They're getting absolutely shredded... just another poster...

It’s been a long time since a movie actually hit home like this one did.

The protagonist, Remy (Jude Law), works for an organization built on the organ trade. People basically buy organs on credit; if they default on their payments, Remy and his partner track them down to forcibly reclaim the hardware. Things take a dark turn when Remy tries to walk away from the business. To ensure he stays, a colleague sets him up with a massive electric shock, leaving Remy waking up in a hospital bed with a brand-new heart...

Action, Thriller, Sci-Fi
USA, Canada, 2010 direction

Direction: Miguel Sapochnik screenplay
Screenplay: Eric Garcia, Garrett Lerner role
Cast: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga, Liev Schreiber, Carice van Houten

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJPlxypbwI who wants to watch

Anyone seen it yet? Thoughts?

Oops, missed that this thread already existed. 😁
But seriously—are we really talking about the DOJ? 😁

I haven't sat through such a massive pile of nonsense in quite a while. Honestly, the core concept of the movie is actually pretty solid, but the execution? Just... nothing. The main guy's motivation feels incredibly shaky and unearned: his whole "awakening" revolves around *** SPOILER tearing organs out of living people while knowing they'll die, only realizing once you get an transplant yourself that those people actually had families and lives that might actually matter, and I just couldn't buy it. Plus, the romantic tension with the female lead felt totally forced—it’s like they spent five minutes together and suddenly it's true love, which makes zero sense to me. Then there's all this gratuitous violence that might have worked if the story wasn't so thin, and don't even get me started on that predictable ending (c'mon ***SPOILER*** it's like the easiest way to wrap things up is just to say "oh, it was all just a dream").
The only redeeming quality, if you can even call it that, was definitely Judd's physique and those blue eyes 😍, but even that isn't enough to make me tell anyone to sit through this.

Morgan Ortiz91 said:I haven't sat through such a massive pile of nonsense in quite a while. Honestly, the core concept of the movie is actually pretty solid, but the execution? Just... nothing. The main guy's motivation feels incredibly shaky and unearned: his whole "awakening" revolves around *** SPOILER tearing organs out of living people while knowing they'll die, only realizing once you get an transplant yourself that those people actually had families and lives that might actually matter, and I just couldn't buy it. Plus, the romantic tension with the female lead felt totally forced—it’s like they spent five minutes together and suddenly it's true love, which makes zero sense to me. Then there's all this gratuitous violence that might have worked if the story wasn't so thin, and don't even get me started on that predictable ending (c'mon ***SPOILER*** it's like the easiest way to wrap things up is just to say "oh, it was all just a dream").
The only redeeming quality, if you can even call it that, was definitely Judd's physique and those blue eyes 😍, but even that isn't enough to make me tell anyone to sit through this.

SPOILERS

The protagonist didn't undergo an "epiphany"—he was just forced into a different set of circumstances.
The entire movie revolves around the idea that things and people can't be two things at once; it's either one or the other. Remember the beginning when they describe that experiment (Schrödinger's cat)? Nothing can be both alive and dead at the same time, but that's just a quantum mechanics paradox. It's the same with Jude Law's character. He starts the film being both alive and dead. Officially, he's alive, but he's a dead man walking because of his job and the life he leads. Once they transplant that second heart, he simply can't exist in that previous "state" anymore. He hasn't become "enlightened" or suddenly found his soul; he’s just been placed in a new reality. He's been moved into a different group (like a repo man vs. a fugitive), and he has no choice but to act according to these new conditions imposed by "physics," "fate," or "life," whatever...
And honestly, the ending is the best part! He stays both alive and dead without even realizing it, which makes him happy (He didn't dream it—his colleague actually knocked him into a permanent coma.)
IMO

Men in Black (2010) 3.5/5 - TRAILER

Pretty solid sci-fi with some cool ideas, but it’s missing that extra spark needed to be truly great. Stylistically, the whole concept—basically a guy running away before turning around to take down the system he used to work for—is giving me heavy > and > vibes, though I don't think that's a bad thing. The plot is predictable in spots, and honestly, so is the ending, even if it tries out some weird solutions (like that organ "scanning" scene that felt like a bizarre, morbid sex scene—totally unrealistic and over the top). The core message could've hit harder, but it kind of got lost halfway through.
Liev Schreiber, Jude Law, and Forest Whitaker are all killer in their own ways here, maybe even great. Everyone else is just mid. Shoutout to the music, too. I dig the song choices; at first glance, they seem like they don't fit certain scenes, but they actually work perfectly. Plus, Marc Beltrami's original score hits hard in places, giving off major superhero movie energy, specifically reminding me of >.
For a debut, Miguel Sapochnik did an okay job directing, even if he stumbled a bit during the action sequences. They’re pretty bloody, and he clearly tried to make them look stylish and fancy, but he didn't quite nail it. Since action isn't the main focus anyway, I guess it doesn't matter that much.

Overall, it's an okay flick with a few flaws, but worth a watch.

By the way, has anyone actually sat down to watch Men in Black, starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton from back in the early eighties? It’s one of those movies where they basically take hippie mythology and crush it with a punk rock attitude.

SPOILERS

Bad, bad, bad. The movie kicks off feeling like some weird Python's sketch about volunteer liver donors, but then it somehow morphs into something like Brazil. If you just look at it from a distance, you might think it’s actually perfect. But honestly? It totally misses the mark. It’s confusing, pretentious, boring, half-baked, unmotivated, uninspired... did I mention it was boring? And if you believe what people are saying online, the whole thing is basically an open-and-shut case of plagiarism.

Avoid it like the plague—better yet, cordon it off with crime scene tape and wrap it up in a shroud.

quietdriver3 said:SPOILERS

Bad, bad, bad. The movie kicks off feeling like some weird Python's sketch about volunteer liver donors, but then it somehow morphs into something like Brazil. If you just look at it from a distance, you might think it’s actually perfect. But honestly? It totally misses the mark. It’s confusing, pretentious, boring, half-baked, unmotivated, uninspired... did I mention it was boring? And if you believe what people are saying online, the whole thing is basically an open-and-shut case of plagiarism.

Avoid it like the plague—better yet, cordon it off with crime scene tape and wrap it up in a shroud.

You're exaggerating a little... but hey, maybe you're right, since if I recall, you actually loved The Wolf Man, which I thought was just mediocre at best...

Anthony Smith3 said:You're exaggerating a little... but hey, maybe you're right, since if I recall, you actually loved The Wolf Man, which I thought was just mediocre at best...

I don't know, The Wolf Man felt like a genuine gothic horror and checked all the boxes for that genre, whereas this one seems like it’s trying to be some dystopian chase movie, but it lacks quality action, it doesn't have that dystopian vibe, and there isn't even an interesting futuristic vision... everything is just hinted at, like a pile of half-baked ideas thrown together. It feels messy, kind of rushed, with characters that feel small-minded and a script that just feels uninspired... I mean, what can I even say when the peak of screenwriting brilliance is a line like, "anyone can dance a horizontal mambo" or something like that. Honestly.

Or that metaphor involving Schrödinger's cat, which the writer clearly doesn't get—it was actually kind of awkward to watch. I mean, would it have been that hard to just Google it a little before writing the script? Man, what a mess.

quietdriver3 said:I don't know, The Wolf Man felt like a genuine gothic horror and checked all the boxes for that genre, whereas this one seems like it’s trying to be some dystopian chase movie, but it lacks quality action, it doesn't have that dystopian vibe, and there isn't even an interesting futuristic vision... everything is just hinted at, like a pile of half-baked ideas thrown together. It feels messy, kind of rushed, with characters that feel small-minded and a script that just feels uninspired... I mean, what can I even say when the peak of screenwriting brilliance is a line like, "anyone can dance a horizontal mambo" or something like that. Honestly.

Or that metaphor involving Schrödinger's cat, which the writer clearly doesn't get—it was actually kind of awkward to watch. I mean, would it have been that hard to just Google it a little before writing the script? Man, what a mess.

I didn't really see it as an action movie anyway, since there's barely any action... it's more like a thriller trying to make a point about the commercialization of healthcare and how much society relies on consultations. Sure... I'll admit the main point gets lost along the way and the movie has its flaws, including a pretty forced romance, but overall, I'm not exactly disappointed...

quietdriver3 said:I don't know, The Wolf Man felt like a genuine gothic horror and checked all the boxes for that genre, whereas this one seems like it’s trying to be some dystopian chase movie, but it lacks quality action, it doesn't have that dystopian vibe, and there isn't even an interesting futuristic vision... everything is just hinted at, like a pile of half-baked ideas thrown together. It feels messy, kind of rushed, with characters that feel small-minded and a script that just feels uninspired... I mean, what can I even say when the peak of screenwriting brilliance is a line like, "anyone can dance a horizontal mambo" or something like that. Honestly.

Or that metaphor involving Schrödinger's cat, which the writer clearly doesn't get—it was actually kind of awkward to watch. I mean, would it have been that hard to just Google it a little before writing the script? Man, what a mess.

What exactly did the writer get wrong about Schrödinger's cat?

Update: How can anyone even call this an action movie? Everything after his clash with Forrest is all in his head. All that action, the romance, all of it... he's just imagining it. It's his mental escape from a world where he was stuck between being alive and dead.