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.

To Catch a Predators

Note: This piece was originally intended to be published on the literary site Open Letters Monthly for their August issue. However, due to organizational chaos beyond anyone's control, edits could not be finished in time for publication. Despite the problems, I still consider Open Letters as a sister site and am already working on a piece for the September issue. Until then, and since I did promise you this review, here you go. Enjoy.

About thirty years ago, science fiction stories were becoming booming business, especially in movie theaters. In 1979, director Ridley Scott brought us a vision straight out of H.R. Giger’s nightmares with Alien. In 1984, it was James Cameron (who would also go on to make the first Alien sequel) who helped make “Ahnold” a true household name with the cyborg-from-the-future Terminator. Finally, in something of holy trifecta, John McTiernan released Predator in 1987 and in doing so introduced to moviegoers one of the most identifiably scary creatures of this or any era.

The creation of what we now associate to be the Predator can be traced back to Oscar-award winning special effects guru Stan Winston, who has worked on such films as Aliens, Jurassic Park, the first two Terminator films, and Edward Scissorhands. After an early prototype of the Predator creature featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme in a suit failed to impress, Winston was called in on actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recommendation. After eight months of brainstorming and creating, Winston then went on to unveil a creature that succeeded at being an imposing, frightening creature even when compared to hulking stars Schwarzeneggar, Carl Weathers and Jesse “The Body” Ventura. At over seven feet and with a alarming assortment of anti-personnel weaponry, not to mention brute strength, nothing like the Predator had been seen before, or seen since.

After making a name for itself by slaughtering an entire joint task force in the jungles of Guatemala, the Predator returned three years in a much different setting. With the release of 1990’s Predator 2, the hunters are introduced to a near-future Los Angeles, smack in the middle of a street war between Colombian and Jamaican gangs, with the LAPD trying to keep the violence under control. With the Predator on the loose, the gang violence goes down, just not the way the police wanted, as the gangs and eventually the police too are slaughtered before the Predator’s violence. What made Predator 2 different from it’s predecessor was not just the setting; it also meant that the monster that stalked the jungles of Guatemala was no aberration. No lone hunter, the Predators became a hunter race, one that had traveled to Earth (and other places) to game hunt. In fact, it was Predator 2 that introduced the idea of a crossover with the Alien franchise, although it would be many years before audiences would be ultimately disappointed by the fare offered in the theaters.

That disappointment did not extend to paper formats, thankfully. It  can be argued that the Predator’s most successful medium has to this point been in literary form, with countless books and comics pitting the Predator not only against human foes, but also famous enemies like Terminators and Aliens (which helped drum up more excitement for the then-upcoming movies). The Predator also successfully crossed-over with more famous comic book heroes such as Judge Dredd, Tarzan, Witchblade, Superman, Batman and once the entire Justice League. Every time it proved itself up to the challenge of facing off against some of the most famous names in the business. And it wasn’t just comics where the Predator reigned supreme: novels by notable sci-fi authors like S.D. Perry have shed even more character and history about this alien race than could be noted here.  And yet none of it has deviated from the brutal and terrifying hunter the Predator is known to be.

Whereas the Alien or Terminator were scary within their own type - Aliens are instinctual hunters driven mostly by the need to reproduce, and the Terminators of course are guided by programming algorithms directing them to kill all humans or carry out certain missions – the Predator has no one type. Their slaughtering of humans has little to do with instinct and everything to do with culture. A hunter race, Predators kill for sport, entertainment, and honor. Besides their obvious physical advantage over the average human being, they also sport all kinds of futuristic technology such as plasma pistols, disc blades, electrified nets, and stealth fields, mixed in with more “primitive” weapons like spears and their famous wrist-mounted blades. In fact, there are many contradictions between the Predator being considered an “advanced” or “primitive race. Says Alec Gillis, the special effects artist who worked on Aliens, Alien 3 and both Alien Vs. Predator movies:

“The Predator society builds sophisticated spaceships, yet they should not look as sleek and hi-tech as a Star Wars stormtrooper. They are a tribal culture, yet their look should not be as primitive as the orcs from Lord of the Rings. They are also a warrior culture, so the ornate cannot conflict with the practical.”

 Combine all these things with their natural ability to see in infared and you have an intelligent, deadly opponent who will find you, will kill you, and will hoist your spine and skull over his head like a trophy. And yet the Predator is far from any amoral murderer. Unlike many hunters in the wild that we’re aware of, they don’t siphon out the weak from the strongest in the herd. In fact, in most cases a Predator will spare children or the sick (or in the case of Maria Conchita Alonso’s character in Predator 2, pregnant), willing rather as a point of honor to face off against the strongest a species has to offer, usually whoever’s the most heavily armed.  And they certainly have the edge over human so-called game hunters, who regularly only hunt in conditions where the prey cannot fight back. In fact, while the title of the new sequel Predators could easily be about that there’s more than one Predator on this game reserve planet, it’s more than just that. In becoming the best hunters they can be, the prey themselves are Predators. Soldiers, gang members, yakuza, psychopaths; in the end, they all pale in comparison to the galaxy’s most perfect hunter.

So while dread is to be expected when facing off against so potent a killer, it’s refreshing that the trademark creature does not make it’s first appearance until significantly into the story of Predators, with hero Adrian Brody’s character more immediately concerned with the fact that he’s falling from quite a significant height and can’t remember jumping from any plane. After a few gripping minutes, his parachute kicks in, and he finds himself in the middle of an unidentifiable jungle and soon surrounded by others confused about their whereabouts such as Alice Braga’s Black Ops sniper, Danny Trejo’s Mexican drug cartel enforcer, Walton Goggins’ death row inmate, and Topher Grace as a doctor who doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the rest of the people associated with mayhem as a profession. They don’t remember how they got there, only that they’re somewhere none of them have been before. Soon it becomes apparent they are not even on Earth anymore, and after they discover they are being hunted by some unknown person or persons, they find they must stick together and find some way to survive and escape the planet.

People might be forgiven for thinking that Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, From Dusk Til Dawn) was in fact the director of this film based on seeing the trailer – as well as the casting of Trejo, a Rodriguez favorite – but while Rodriguez produced the film it was actually directed by award-winner Nimrod Antal (for the Hungarian Control) and to his credit he retains everything that made the first two Predator films great while adding his own brand of unique ideas to the story. For instance, it’s actually an offshoot rival clan of Predators that have set up this preserve, while also holding a blood feud with the original “classic” Predators. Also added are hunting “dogs” and a robotic bird much like a spy drone used to search for the prey. At first I was put off by these additions as they had no place in any previous Predator storyline – movies or books – but with the realization that these creatures are true adaptors, constantly striving to be better hunters over generations, the idea actually made sense and these enhancements more acceptable.

The acting is surprisingly solid throughout, as well. Brody, who’s Oscar win for The Pianist unsettlingly set the stage for his rapid spiral career descent, shows he can still be a strong lead given half a chance, properly channeling an inner deadness gained from years in the military and as a mercenary. As his better half, Braga is perfect displaying the humanity Brody’s character seems to lack, and their interactions are among the best character interactions in the movie. Lawrence Fishburne appears about halfway through the film as a half-crazy survivor who’s been on the planet for ten seasons and although he out-acts everyone else in the room three times over he thankfully doesn’t take over, instead enjoying his quick cameo role and helping set up the final act. Goggins also deserves credit for his portrayal of the former death row inmate. Making such an unlikable character amusing to the audience is no small feat; Goggins does it almost unnoticeably and even though the other characters can’t stand him, he’s definitely amusing to us in the seats. Finally Topher Grace is perfectly cast as the seemingly out-of-his-element doctor who doesn’t seem to be useful or dangerous. He does help illicit some helpful plot points early on, but you just know he’s not what he seems and part of the fun of watching his performance is trying to determine if your instincts are on the money.

The best thing I can say about Predators is that when handling established licenses you should not
screw with what works (See Alien: Resurrection or the AVP series for proof) and thankfully that’s what we see here. Rodriguez, Antal, and their crew created a completely believable sequel for the Predator franchise to take, and didn’t change what made the creature so great. They even retained the music from the original Predator film to close out the credits, as an homage to the original. While there are references to the original film on more than one occasion, this is definitely it’s own movie, it’s own story, always respectful to the source material but not enslaved to it. Predators is suspenseful and shocking and you will sit on the edge of your seat wondering who will survive in the ultimate test of predators and prey.