REPO MAN (1984)
By Andrew Roberts, 04-10-09
As embarrassing as this is to admit, I had never seen Repo Man until I was assigned to review it, and now that I’ve seen it I’m embarrassed that it took me this long. For those out there who are still laboring under the same deficit, the plot of Repo Man goes something like this: Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez) is a down-on-his-luck punk in 80’s Los Angeles who falls in with a bunch of quirky auto repossession agents and ends up on the trail of a Chevy Malibu with an unusual cargo in the trunk. Trouble is, Otto and his fellow repo men aren’t the only ones after the Malibu, and so Otto finds himself dodging sinister government agents, a pair of car thieves, a UFO cult, a goofy televangelist, and his old punk-rocker friends as he and Bud (Harry Dean Stanton,) Miller (Tracey Walker,) and Lite (Sy Richardson) chase the elusive car.
Repo Man is a deeply weird movie, full of heavy drug use, drinking, char chases, sex (more implied than explicit,) and offbeat humor. The Los Angeles depicted in the movie is almost a sort of carnival mirror version of LA: Men in haz-mat suits collect dead bums from Skid Row while narrating their actions (”I’m picking up the dead wino . . . I’m carrying his limp torso to the truck”) and nobody thinks this is unusual. Everything anybody buys comes in the old-school blue and white generic packaging–”BEER,” “CORN FLAKES,” “DRINK” “LIGHT RUM.” Insane and violent things happen and the characters take this in stride, as though these events were not only unremarkable but actually commonplace. The dialogue (written by Alex Cox, who also directed) is witty and far-out and adds still more surrealism to the already preposterous situations the characters find themselves in.
Fans of Repo Man–which your writer now considers himself–will be excited to discover that Cox has engineered a sequel, Repo Chick, produced by none other than David Lynch and currently in post-production. Details at this time are sketchy, but with any luck the sequel will be worth cracking open a few beers–sorry, BEERS–and heading to the seediest theatre you can find to check it out. The life of a Repo person is always intense!
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