Should've Been Recalled

Sometimes an interesting idea alone isn't enough. When author Eric Garcia began co-writing a screenplay based on his in-progress novel Reposession Mambo, he must have thought it was pretty cool. When the film was released a scant year after his book, he must have thought, "wow". After the movie got mostly negative reviews and made back only a fraction of the money it cost to make it, his response was probably something like "oops".

Repo Men takes place in 2025, where a corporation called The Union has made quite a fortune for itself by selling replacement organs, joints and other body parts to those that need or want them. The dark side of this is that if the recipient can't make their regular (and expensive) payments, the organs are default and The Union sends one of it's "Repo Men" to reclaim the part by breaking into your home, incapacitating you, and cutting you open to remove the part, presumably leaving you to die on the floor of your abode. It's in this act where we meet Remy, a Repo Man played by Jude Law. He's worked as a Repo Man for years alongside his best friend Jake, played by Forest Whitaker. He has a good life, makes good money, and is slowly being pulled in two directions. His wife Carol (Carice Van Houten) wants him to step away from the repo aspect of his job, and instead transfer to a job in sales, while Jake wants him to remain in Repo, to remain his best friend, which he doesn't see happening if he goes to sales. Deciding to honor the wishes of his family, Remy goes on one last job...

Law (L), and Whitaker

This futuristic setting is at first rendered in a fashion that I think was meant to be like Blade Runner, but that analogy quickly falls apart as we see less and less city as the movie progresses, taking place many times either in the unchanged suburbs or the decrepit and seedy junktown on the outskirts of the city where people are fleeing repossession. It's this mishmash of settings that is the most distracting aspect of the film, as the moviemakers don't seem to know exactly what kind of future they want to create, or even more criminally, how to use setting to emphasize the mood of a film. Night and day are used intermittantly, and while there is the obvious difference between the stark, uniform city of The Union and the pleasant, innocent aspect of the suburbs, there's little to no connection between the two, no reason to think these places would exist simultaneously in the same universe, let alone the same city.

The acting here is good, though not great. I've always thought that Jude Law was an overrated actor, with over-hyped performances in films like The Talented Mister Ripley and Cold Mountain the result more of Hollywood's search for a new Clark Gable rather than any actual talent on his part. He redeemed himself in my eyes more recently in films like My Blueberry Nights and Sherlock Holmes, and even in this piteously bad film he is in fact excellent, conveying mood in his eyes and visually believing the dialogue coming from his lips. He easily outpaces Whitaker, who seems to be once again playing a variation of himself, with little range between goofy happiness and psychotic anger. Whitaker, who teased audiences with his charismatic performance in The Last King of Scotland, seems to be constantly proving that his performance in the fictional story of Uganda's Idi Amin was a fluke rather than a process of growing talent. In smaller roles are Liev Schreiber and Alice Braga, but both were in better films this year (Salt and Predators, respectively), while cameo roles by John Leguizamo and hip-hop artist and producer RZA are surprisingly good, though Leguizamo's role appears only when the audience has lost all interest in what's happening. Van Houten hasn't exactly lit up the sky with her American film appearances since 2006's Black Book, as Valkyrie and this film hardly do her justice after being nominated for so many awards based on her role as a Jewish spy in WWII. She's underused and overqualified, and surprisingly has not gotten the same respect that has been bestowed upon a different international actress that had her big break only one year later, Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose.

The film starts off strong before dawdling and dwindling in interest about half an hour in, and abhorred pacing means that we're never sure what part of the narrative we're actually in. At least half a dozen times I found myself muttering to myself, asking why the movie was not yet over, why it was still going on. At that point I didn't need a real conclusion, I would have settled for a half-assed setup to an inevitable sequel just to see the film end. There was so much exposition, thinly-veiled plot-points and clues to how the movie would actually end, and frankly it was simply bogging down my viewing experience, a movie that played like a no-think action/thriller attempting to make me think about it's stupid ideas more than I need to. The film does finally ramp up in a final, bloody, sequence that actually brought my interest back to the film, even if it was highly predictable.

The idea of a big corporation being the blank-faced bad-guy is nothing new. I can think of at least a half-dozen titles off the top of my head that use that same theme (including one of my favorite all-time films, Alien), and seeing it here again only fills me with a ho-hum feeling, even if we actually see into the evil machinations of this particular corporation. What bothers me the most is the public aspect of it's evil. The movie states that The Union actually makes most of it's money from re-selling reposessed organs, so they sell an organ, the customer fails to make payments, they repossess the organ, repeat. That makes sense. It even makes sense that there would be people running from repossession who couldn't pay, an underground. The problem I have is that the public seems to know about these Repo Men, and they are easily recognizable by The Union tattoos printed on their necks. So that raises the question: why would people buy organs from The Union if they know there's a chance they might be repossessed? Even if they were desperate, there couldn't be THAT many desperate people out there to keep such a company afloat, let alone with a choke-hold on the government to overlook such things. Perhaps I'm simply being naive, but it simply doesn't seem feasable to me.

If there's one thing redeeming the film (besides it's ending), it's the soundtrack. Though track from the likes of RZA and Beck are not stellar, it's when the music takes a step into the far past that we get a real feeling for the film, as songs by Nina Simone and Rosemary Clooney take center stage. It's flashback music more than makes up for the more contemporary duds, and like Simone we are "Feeling Good" when they're playing in the background.

Let's be honest here, Repo Men is a bad movie. It starts quick, gets bogged down by clutter and mess in the middle, before finishing off in an exciting but highly predictable ending. The film is only 111 minutes but feels twice as long, and I wouldn't be surprised if anyone started watching this movie stood up, turned off the TV, and went into the other room to do something else. The film does have an interesting premise, but it's not nearly enough to keep the audience watching. It doesn't come close to being one of this year's Top 10 Films, as the only movie worse than Repo Men this year would have to be Legion, and that's saying something profound. Certainly more profound than anything Repo Men had to tell us.

Too Salty

As I type this I've just come home from a midnight release showing of Salt, the new movie by Welsh director Phillip Noyce starring Angelina Jolie as a C.I.A. operative accused of being a Russian spy, with my good friend The Opinioness. Midnight releases are something of a risk. If the movie is good, it's money and time well spent. If the movie tanks, or is mediocre (thus failing to even bomb spectacularly), you've just wasted two hours of your life and too much money to see a movie that would barely be worth rental fees, especially if you have to be up early for work the next day. For all the attention Salt has received in recent months (including a Jolie cover on the current Vanity Fair) and a story involving espionage and outrageous stunt sequences, it was destined to become part of the former category, but still, this is the midnight release, and there's always risk involved.

The character of Evelyn Salt is definitely one that gets a lot of attention, as the natural question on viewer's minds naturally trends to whether or not she is in fact a Russian spy. But the original creation of the character bears much interest, as the original script didn't have Salt as a woman at all. In fact, the character was originally written with Tom Cruise in mind to play the suspected traitor, but Cruise declined, citing among other reasons that the character was too close in proximity to his Mission Impossible character Ethan Hunt. Jolie, who had shown interest in being part of a female espionage franchise, was shown the script (presumably with the necessary parts moved) and liked it enough to sign onto the project. It was possibly the best casting job the studios could have pulled off, as Jolie is one of the hardest workers in the industry, whether it be nailing down her part to perfection or getting in shape to pull off her own stunts. Jolie is just that good, and easily the best part of Salt.

If only the rest of the movie had come anywhere close to that level of quality exuded by Jolie. The story actually starts out well, with Salt being accused by a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) of being a Russian agent, trained as a child to infiltrate the United States government to carry out a mission to end America's dominance as part of an ancient Soviet Cold War plot. Salt, in attempting to prove her innocence, escapes the clutches of her employers at the C.I.A. who want her to remain in custody until things can be sorted out. With agents Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) hot on her trail, the chase sequence that ensues is quite amazing to take in, from Salt's escape from her headquarters building to shimmying window ledges of an apartment complex to leaping across the roofs of tractor trailers on the highway. It's mostly unbelievable how some things are pulled off, but only lending credence to the idea that she's one of the best. The only question is whether she's the best of us or them.

It's about this point about a third of the way through the film that it all begins to lose steam. Already we had been subjected to poor flashback sequences of the Russian child sleeper program, as well as a young romance between Salt and her soon-to-be husband (August Diehl, best known from his fantastic small role in Inglourious Basterds). The sequences, not only stupid, tell us far too much about the backstory that doesn't need to be known to truly enjoy the main plot. And the plot itself has it's moments, mostly in moments of true shocks and twists (many of which even the most astute of viewers may not see coming), but the actual plan the Soviets have to wreak havoc isn't concise or clever, merely convoluted and haphazard. And really, Soviets? Were they chosen as the villains because they don't exist anymore and the moviemakers didn't want to risk offending any of the nations or cultures that might be MORE likely to commit atrocities on American soil? Even better, how did you manage to create an action movie in which I was BORED during the ACTION sequences? For every moment I was truly shocked there were twenty minutes or more which was dull, dull, dull.

I've mentioned how good Jolie's performance was (I don't get the hate people carry for her, Angelina Jolie is one of the best workers in Hollywood) and it's unfortunate that the rest of the acting didn't live up to the top billing. Scheriber I thought was dull and dry as Jolie's friend and C.I.A. partner, but he gets a chance to redeem his performance in the second half of the film. Ejiofor, however, was the real disappointment. I've lauded Ejiofor in the past for his great performances in Serenity and 2012 but here he does little with what's given him. Don't get me wrong, what's given him IS horrible, but it would have been nice for him to infuse his bad dialogue with a little personality as Jolie and Schreiber were able to do. Olbrychski is mediocre, a typical Russian agent, and we don't get to see much of Diehl, but the chemistry between him and Salt is believable as husband and wife.

What Salt does well is make us question who's playing who, and to what end. What are we supposed to think when Salt apparently kills the Russian president when that's what we've been told is the mission of the Russian spy? The exact opposite of what we should be, but that's the best part of the storytelling. But the action is a mishmash of bad camera work and lack of balance, with one particular scene near the end lacking anything in the way of grace or poetry in motion. With a weak second half, atrocious dialogue, plotholes you could pass a 747 through, too many dull moments and a plot that reeks of leftovers from other, better spy movies (Mission Impossible, the new James Bond, the Bourne series), it's a shame that this film ended up in Jolie's lap. Jolie has made a career out of portraying strong female characters and really wanted to get a female-fronted espionage franchise off the ground. It's an inspiring goal, but Salt may end that momentum before it even gets going. I can't with any sense of decency recommend seeing this film, either in the theaters or in what I'm sure will be a quick transferal to DVD. There are mindless, fun, popcorn action films (like this summer's A-Team) that are far less believable, but since they're not trying to do anything revolutionary they can get away with the silly. Salt tried to go the intellectual route, and it burns the film and the moviegoing audience badly. Skip it.