Thursday, August 18, 2011

Repo Men: Part 2

We left our hero last time in mid-epiphany, complete with the dundun-DUNDUN-dundun-DUNDUN cello music from every superhero movie. Let's see what kind of antics his new-found junkie-girl rescuing morals get him into.

Back in the locker room at Evil Organ Inc., Schreiber, at his most typical, gives Law's Recall Notice to Whitaker, who politely declines. Schreiber then offers the ticket to the other repo men who, since they have no lines in the script, look away embarrassed.

Cut to the slums, where Law and his girlfriend (I'm almost certain her character hasn't been given a name yet,) are digging through other peoples' refuse for valuables to store in a stolen shopping cart. Singer Girl, apparently done with drugs forever since, as any reformed drug addict will tell you, the only way to recover from the self-destructive cycle of addiction is to be abducted and kept against one's will by a violent psychopath. She also unearths the old-fashioned typewriter we saw Jason Sta...uh, Jude Law pecking out his voice over's on at the beginning of the film.

At this point Law, being legally retarded, asks in open wonderment how Singer Girl keeps track of her many organ replacements. It would seem remembering the names of almost a dozen different body parts is an incomprehensible feat of intellectual prowess to Law. Singer Girl then mumbles at length which, combined with her thick accent made it impossible for me to understand whatever plot points she brought up. But knowing the Director I feel confident that they will be explained several times over the next couple of minutes.

Oh. Her lips are not robots. Awwwww. Cue obligatory soft-core bag lady porn.

In the next scene Law's voice over explains that what he's been writing is a cautionary tale to keep others from making the same mistakes that he has. I would have thought merely posting a bulletin about never working with any of these people would have been a lot more effective and less embarrassing. Law then watches several school girls playing jump rope through his binoculars, since child voyeurism had yet to be checked off of Sapochnik's list of "Evil Shit To Put In Movie."

Singer Girl then uses her robot ears to detect the approaching repo man Landlord (not sure if that's his name or Law's attempt at humor, but he's the even more retarded repo man from the beginning of the film,) in time for them to make a daring escape. It would seem her unintelligible monologue earlier was explaining that she was the 6 Million Dollar Man.

After setting up a not very cunning or believable pitfall trap (the new repo man, after using his scanner gun to find Law from a block away, but somehow failing to detect the Robo-Junkie hiding in the same room, then gives up a tactical advantage by holstering his stun gun to attack Law with a machete,) the floor collapses further revealing that the Love Interest's name is Beth. Law then drops his typewriter on Landlord's skull.

In a freshly stolen Volkswagon, Beth repairs her damaged knee with a home surgery/electricians tool bag she had been hiding somewhere. Which is weird, since Law hadn't noticed it even though he carried her unconscious body to the stolen SUV.

Arriving in the parking garage, we find the Company's Lung Mascot on a cigarette break. The Director, realizing this is far too subtle and clever for anyone but him to notice, has Law point out the irony.

Law, disguised as a lung, although I don't think the audience is supposed to know that, but it's impossible not to, sneaks into the building where he is immediately set upon by the two most irritating children in the history of film (HI LARRY!!!! HI LARRY!!! HI LARRRY!!!! HI LARRY!!!!) He then has an irritating and pointless "I'll go this way, no, I'll go this way," collision with Whitaker, then goes to Schreiber's office and punches him a lot.

Surprise! The lung was really Law in disguise!

Law then pulls out the stun gun he so seriously and symbolically walked away from earlier and trains it on Schreiber. 'Witty' banter ensues, then Law tosses Schreiber a tattooed lump of skin from Landlord, ending their jovial reunion.

Schreiber informs Law that it's impossible to take Law's heart out of the system since (Dun Dun DUUUUuuuunnnn,) he knows about Law's clumsy attempt to scratch off the bar codes and all organs now have to be sent back to the Corporate Office instead of tossed in a bin in the locker room. Management, amirite? Then Schreiber, being Schreiber, tries to up-sell Law, who tazers Schreiber and steals some paperwork and probably the jamming devices from earlier.

Back in the parking garage Law informs Beth that they're leaving for Kenya, South America, which I guess is a place in the future. Beth points out that trying to get on a plane would be a titanically stupid idea. Law reveals (surprise!) the jamming devices.

After another Volkswagon commercial, Schreiber orders Whitaker to personally take out Law. The Volkswagon Touareg, by the way, got fourth billing in this movie.

At the airport, which is exactly the same as airports not in the future, Law and Beth proceed to behave as suspiciously as humanly possible. Or robotically possible, in Beth's case. Somehow this fails to work and Law has to kill everyone with his usual combination of Jason Statham-y swagger and inventive gleeful sadism.

Whitaker appears at the airport and seems genuinely surprised to see Law there. Which means Whitaker must have been at the airport for some mysterious, unrelated reason that didn't involve his job or getting on a plane. My guess is anonymous gay sex in the bathroom with someone he met on Craigslist.

Escaping back to the slums, Beth informs Law that, since his stupid-ass plan accomplished nothing except almost getting them killed repeatedly, they were going to a 'Vulture' that she knew. "Not a scavenger?!" exclaims Law, providing no clarification. It is made clear that neither of them is happy about having to do this, but it is also clear that repeatedly stabbing her own knee with a filthy surgical tool didn't fix Beth's knee as nearly well as she claimed it had.

The Vulture is John Leguizamo!!! He is so good! Why does he keep signing on for terrible movies like this?! I would like to point out that according to the Internet Movie Database, Leguizamo's role in this film was uncredited, placing him alongside Dancing Girl #2, Hot Commercial Girl and Hot Girlfriend on the shockingly short list of people that knew what a career-killingly awful movie this was.

After some brief half-in-Spanish tough guy dialogue, Leguizamo uses a 'universal remote' to control Beth's voice box. The universal remote, for some reason, is an antique television remote from the 60's with four buttons on it. Leguizamo then describes an impossible amount of sciency things that can be done with it. He then reveals himself to be (spit-take,) Beth's drug dealer. He then starts dancing. There is no reason for this. There's no reason for any of this. There's just, there's no God anymore. Just this, forever.

Leguizamo and Law then get into an ideological debate straight out of 4th grade while Beth slowly bleeds to death. Leguizamo informs Beth that he won't help her for unclear reasons and that she should seek the help of yet another previously unmentioned character that had, I guess, tried to kill her at some point.

Flash cut to a different shit hole apartment/operating room, this one containing several Asian stereotypes, in a nice break from the Mexican machismo stereotypes of the last scene. Beth mumbles out a list of her implants again while a 9 year old girl performs very disgusting surgery on Beth.

Later, in an alley, Beth's super-robot-ears stop working long enough for Law to hear the ping of the price guns first. This leads quickly to Leguizamo's gutted carcass. Leguizamo's universal remote activates a recording of the last things Leguizamo said, which was that he was killed by repo men. Whitaker then comes out of the closet. Unfortunately not in a dramatic "I've always loved you Jude Law," way, but in an "I was just standing over here,' way. He then gives no real explanation on how he tracked them to Leguizamo's apartment, since that would have required Whitaker to be Professor X. Or, you know, have access to a tracking device, which haven't been invented.

Whitaker, seething with jealousy over Law's feeling's for Beth, promises Law that he can make things right with Schreiber if Law returns with Whitaker. Law refuses, being in wuuuuv, and Whitaker calls him a pussy. The word 'pussy' makes Whitaker visibly uncomfortable. Whitaker also reveals that it was him that sabotaged Law's defibrillator unit in a cunning plot from the Psychotic Girlfriend's Handbook to keep Law from leaving him for a different position.

Law loses the ensuing fistfight badly, although he does take Terminator levels of abuse from the fight. In fact, the entire punch up was lifted almost frame for frame from the Terminator 3 bathroom fight.

Through a wall,

Into a sink,

Onto a catwalk.
At this point Law and Whitaker start laughing for some reason, Whitaker offers Law his hand, Law stabs Whitaker in the leg, and Whitaker smashes Law's skull in.

Law's life, or at least those parts of his life that had already been filmed, flashes before his eyes, along with scenes from the M.5 Neural Net commercial and computery noises. I have no idea what this could entail for our hero.

Fading back into the squatter's nest and totally not a computer generated hallucination of the squatter's nest courtesy of the M.5 Neural Net, Law is, amazingly, still alive, although Whitaker is mysteriously dead. The other denizens begin screaming "Raid!" and leaving en masse, since two repo men are not enough to trigger the squatters' flight or fight instinct, but three causes a full-scale panic.

In another action scene derivative of every action movie ever, our hero's manage to escape by pure dumb luck, employing the same running away strategy as everyone else and accidentally not being shot. They are then yanked into a Rebel Hideout, where Law is not summarily executed by dint of this entire sequence taking place in his damaged imagination.

Just to make sure all moves are telegraphed, the possibly Rebel Leader even says "Welcome to your world, Repo Man," completely out of context with anything else in the scene. Get it? He's in a simulation! Bet you won't see that coming!

Law, awakening to a hanger full of butchered corpses, including the nine year old surgeon, since the audience had so much emotionally invested in her after her two lines and 45 seconds of screen time. Law responds to this by going out into a field while Beth asks him to come back inside with the many, many mutilated corpses. Law, stating the hopelessness of their situation, informs Beth that he is going to finish this.

In a subway station, Law explains his plan to go behind the Pink Door at the Corporate Office and steal Project Mayhem from Fight Club. Law's wife and son magically appear. Law's wife, in mid-bitch, is tazered in the back by Law's son, himself an aspiring gleeful sadism expert. Law gives his Cautionary Tale to his son, tells him he loves him, and flees, leaving his child alone on a subway at night. There is also a very subtle billboard behind the subway car advertising the M.5 Neural Net.

After our hero's somehow bypass the alarm on Schreiber's car, break into it, rearm the alarm and hide in the backseat, Schreiber gets in his car and is promptly tazered.

Law then begins his assault on the Corporate Office in what can best be described as a mixture of terrible jokes and Cannibal Corpse album cover. Four long, long minutes into this Repo Men remembers it hasn't stolen any ideas from better movies in almost four minutes, and lifts the claw-hammer sequence from Oldboy, replacing the claw-hammer with daggers, a hacksaw and (in a fit of creative bankruptcy,) a ball-peen hammer, the seasoned gang members were replaced with white collar office workers. Somehow this fails to be as viscerally satisfying or tastefully done as Oldboy. I would like to remind everyone that Oldboy was a movie almost exclusively about blood-soaked revenge and incest.

Whitaker and Schreiber magically reappear again, just as Law and Beth break into the Pink Room, where they realize they'll have to manually scan their robo-organs into the machine.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that anyone reading this has plans to eat at some point in the future, so I won't go into detail about the climax of the movie, but phrases like 'hardcore snuff film,' 'drug-addled knife rape,' and 'wound-fucking,' would be woefully inadequate.

Finally this madness ends with, unsurprisingly, an explosion set to idiosyncratic music.

Cut to Law, Beth and Whitaker vacationing on the island from the M.5 Neural Net commercial where, HOLY SHIT Law has been in the M.5 Neural Net since Whitaker brained him back at the squatter's nest.

So, having resolved nothing, learned no lessons, served no purpose, or made any meaningful impact:

THE END 

 

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