Repreneurs

Le bilan est accablant : réalisation informe, critique sociale inopérante (sur l'endettement et le totalitarisme économique), interprétation approximative, ouf!

La suite est fort complexe, on peine à suivre, mais on aura droit à quelques scènes de combat admirablement chorégraphiées (empruntées au cinéma asiatique), à des plans tétanisants dans les laboratoires aseptisés de The Union (plans qui ramènent à Kubrick) et à un final désespéré, hommage évident au Brazil de Terry Gilliam.

Bearing the clear marks of long post-production delays and a lot of tinkering in the editing room, Repo Men is largely a mess, zipping among flashbacks and action scenes and brutally gory moments with little narrative drive to link it all together.

Nothing about this movie seems original or fresh - including the repurposed mechanical body parts. Worse, the story's internal logic lacks coherence and structure. The Union, the company that manufactures and markets these synthetic body parts, takes them back by force - usually killing the patient in the process - if payments are past due for 90 days.

These potent moments aside, the film has neither the intellectual rigor nor the internal consistency needed to make its vision of the future seem even remotely plausible, and it short-circuits its more provocative implications in a muddle of conflicting moods.

It may have been a shrewd business decision by the film's director, Miguel Sapochnik, to treat the story as a nasty, comic thriller. But when, after a certain point, Repo Men subsumes its satire to strenuous action sequences, it loses its edge and turns into a chase movie of no special distinction. It also becomes sentimental, as the technically heartless Remy suddenly gains his soul and sets out to destroy the Union.