Repo Men

"If you can't pay for your car, the bank takes it back. If you can't pay for your house, the bank takes it back. If you can't pay for your liver, well, that's where I come in."

In the future humans have extended and improved our lives through highly sophisticated and expensive mechanical organs created by a company called "The Union". The dark side of these medical breakthroughs is that if you don't pay your bill, "The Union" sends its highly skilled repo men to take back its property... with no concern for your comfort or survival. Former soldier Remy is one of the best organ repo men in the business. But when he suffers a cardiac failure on the job, he awakens to find himself fitted with the company's top-of-the-line heart-replacement... as well as a hefty debt. But a side effect of the procedure is that his heart's no longer in the job. When he can't make the payments, The Union sends its toughest enforcer, Remy's former partner Jake, to track him down.

Notably, the basic premise of the film (large corporation provides organs for transplants but lethally repossesses from anyone who fails to make their payments) appears to be lifted wholesale from Repo! The Genetic Opera. However, careful research reveals it was the pet project of author Eric Garcia (Matchstick Men, Anonymous Rex) since roughly the same time Repo! was in its own embryonic stages. Even the film critics who did not note that similarity, noted that whole bits of the general look, style, direction and concept seemed to have been lifted from Blade Runner, Coma, David Cronenberg's Crash, Logan's Run, Brazil, Total Recall and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

No relation to Repo Man either.


 * All Just a Dream:
 * Arc Words: "You owe it to your family. You owe it to yourself."
 * Badass: Remy and Jake.
 * Bittersweet Ending: In the end we find that getting
 * The Cameo: The RZA makes an appearance as the DJ Remy gets injured repossessing organs from.
 * Chekhov's Gun: The scrambler devices, and more importantly
 * Comedic Sociopathy / For the Evulz: Jake and Remy go to "check up" on someone who has fallen behind on their payments and to remind him he's got 3 days left. Before doing so they make a bet on whether he'll run or not
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Remy and
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Inverted, as Remy only realizes the horror of his profession after his organic heart is replaced with an artificial one.
 * Development Hell: Both the book and the film suffered through it. The book was written in 1996 but wasn't published until 2008. Meanwhile, the manuscript had circulated in Hollywood and a film version was greenlighted. The film was made between 2007-2008 but spent two years on the shelf.
 * Drop the Hammer
 * Dumb Muscle: Remy and Jake met in 4th grade where Jake was the class bully on account of being much larger than his classmates. He was bigger because he had been held back 3 times.
 * Film of the Book: The Repossesion Mambo.
 * Follow the Leader: Just a bit.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * Heroic Sociopath: Remy starts as one; should it really take getting an organ himself to realise his targets were like him?
 * If I Can't Have You: Jake tried to convince Remy that repo is what they were meant to do together. They've been together since childhood and a war, so their bond was strong. Strong enough that Jake did underhanded things to make sure they'd stay together..
 * Interplay of Sex and Violence: The penulitimate scene in which  is....well, with the music, and the moans, and the sticking things into other things...
 * Karma Houdini:
 * Literal Change of Heart: Remy only acts like a decent human being after losing his heart and having it replaced with a mechanical heart.
 * Love Makes You Crazy:
 * Mind Screw: See Bittersweet Ending.
 * Moral Dissonance: Remy can't bring himself to repossess organs after being a recipient of an organ himself, viewing it as murder. However, he has no problems slicing up his former co-workers and murdering a security guard merely because they work for The Union, probably because those he's trying to repossess are innocent people.
 * Lotus Eater Machine
 * Organ Theft: The Union's business model is a subversion.
 * Punch Clock Villain: Jake seems to qualify.
 * Resignations Not Accepted
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Most definitely.
 * Snicket Warning Label:.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: Soooooooooooooooooooo much.
 * Status Quo Is God: Jake seems perfectly happy with the way everything works. He likes it so much he hates (and would even kill) anyone who disrespects it or criticize it.
 * Stealth Pun: After Remy receives his artificial heart, he begins to feel for the victims of repossession and rethink the ethics of his job... that is to say, he has a change of heart.
 * The Stinger: A minor one- at the end of the credits, The Union's logo appears, with "All artiforgs are subject to repossession in the event of nonpayment" underneath.
 * Stun Guns: The weapon of choice for the repo men.
 * Title Drop: Sort of. At the end we see that Remy called his story The Repossesion Mambo, which is the name of the book the movie is based on.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means
 * X Meets Y: Repo Men could be summarized as "the plot of Equilibrium in the setting of Repo! The Genetic Opera with the aesthetic of Minority Report."
 * You're Insane!: