Movie Review - Repo Man
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1984 / 92 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
If movies were people, then “Repo Man” would be in a small, padded cell wearing a straightjacket and taking shock therapy treatments. It is one of the more insane films this side of David Lynch.
On the plus side, however, many of the people and situations within it are so weird and outlandish they are funny.
You have to give “Repo Man” points just for introducing you to a bunch of people we have never met in a movie before. The film begins with a lobotomized nuclear scientist driving a Chevy Malibu through the desert, away from Area 51. He gets pulled over. The cop wants to see the trunk. The scientist tells him that he shouldn’t. The cop looks in the trunk and then evaporates, leaving only his smoking boots behind. The scientist sighs, shakes his head and drives onward.
We then meet the Repo Man of the title: a punk named Otto. The first time we see him, Otto is stacking cans in a grocery store. The manager comes by and confronts Otto about him having a bad attitude. Otto responds by throwing the man through the stack of cans, flipping him both birds, and walking away from the job. I don’t know about you, but I can get behind a dude like that.
One day, a grizzled old repo man (Harry Dean Stanton) pulls up to Otto and asks him if he wants twenty bucks to drive a car. After the obligatory saying of “F*** You”, Otto drives the car. Thus, he becomes a repo man, learning to repossess cars and learning the rules of the repo man trade.
Soon, he comes upon the Malibu, which is hot in more ways than one. To repossess the Malibu will mean a large reward for anyone hardy enough to do so. And there are many people after the car and the money.
I cannot say that “Repo Man” is a great film. It seems ultimately to have no point (then again, that didn’t stop me from liking “The Big Lebowski” and liking it quite a bit). It seems to want to be about some larger theme, but I can’t quite determine what that is. And sometimes the film is a little too weird for its own good. “Being John Malkovich” was weird too. But it moved to its weirdness one level at a time. It built a pyramid of weirdness as it progressed. “Repo Man” just seems to throw it in at a certain point and it makes the whole film needlessly confusing. I liked this movie when it was progressing along its own natural, bizarre train of thought, before it over-complicated itself.
But it is still a pretty fun one. I loved the two main characters, as well as a mechanic who believes that get stupider the more you drive. He’s one of those guys who has a theory for everything. Even if it does make sense only to him. I liked meeting these characters, even if I didn’t ultimately know what was happening to them. I also liked the subtle little homage to “2001: A Space Odyssey” tucked into it.
It’s a bizarre cinematic experience, but if you are in the mood for something different, this might just be right up your alley.
