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SPOILER-FREE SUMMARY:


A decent action/thriller with a top-notch cast, Repo Men falls flat due to a stilted romance and an obvious ending.


WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!!!


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Repo Men was a bit of a mixed bag.  On the whole, I liked it; but it's far from being a great movie.  Jude Law is terrific as always (has he ever made a bad movie?  Alfie didn't look that great but I never saw it...) and Forrest Whitaker is more lively than usual as Jude's partner.  The plot, if you hadn't gathered it from the trailer, is that in the future a company called The Union sells synthetic organs to sick patients but sends out its own repo men to collect the organs if you fall behind on your payments.  Jude and Forrest are two such repo men.


The first half of the movie is pretty solid.  We get to see the guys in action, get a nice feel for their world, but then the RZA (of the Wu-Tang clan) shows up and the shit just gets weirder from there.  Jude tries to repossess the RZA's heart but a faulty defibrillator knocks Jude unconscious.  When he awakens, he finds that his Union bosses have put a new artificial heart in on his behalf.  I'm sure you can guess where it goes from there: Jude defaults on the payments, his old buddy Forrest comes after him, and he spends the second half of the film on the run.


Now, that's all fine and good but it was the ridiculous romantic storyline that killed it for me.  Jude, having been kicked out of the house by his wife and son, starts shacking up with a destitute woman who just happens to have about 10 different "artiforgs" (yeah, that's what they call them) in her.  Why he does is anybody's guess.  He first spots her at a bar near the beginning of the movie and gets completely entangled with her for the last half of the film.  No offense to the actress, but she's far from drop-dead gorgeous and her homeless living conditions aren't exactly a turn-on either.  But we're supposed to believe that Jude would totally give up on his wife and son and devote his life to this stranger.  Whatever.


I won't spoil the ending for you but suffice it to say that there's an intentional reason that Jude ended up with that artificial heart and there's a "twist" ending that you'll see coming from a mile away.


Bottom line: I'd watch it again...but I'm in no hurry.