Repo Man (1984)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Nice effects though.

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Absolutely brilliant

A young deliquent is recruited by a repo agent to repossess people's cars. Along the way he has adventures with his co-workers, run-ins with his criminal friends, and the rival repo gang the Rodriguez Brothers, and falls for a woman chasing UFO's and aliens.The race is on for a $20,000 Chevy Malibu , but everyone after the prize is unaware the aliens are hiding in the trunk of the car!

Immature punk rocker meanders through a post-capitalist wasteland, struggling to find meaning in a soulless, consumerist existence. Also, there are aliens, maybe. Delightfully surreal and with just a pinch of pathos, Repo Man is one of those quintessentially 80's movies.

Version I saw: UK Bluray releaseActors: 5/10Plot/script: 5/10Photography/visual style: 5/10Music/score: 7/10Overall: 6/10What with 'Repo Man' and 'Sid & Nancy', Alex Cox has a fairly good claim to the (non-existent) title of the punk movement's official movie director. He made two films which, in different ways, neatly sum up and characterize the punk ethos.'Repo Man' is mainly the story of a delinquent named Otto (Emilio Estevez) who take a job impounding cars. However, in the background of this mundane story, government agents are hunting a car boot full of mysterious radioactive material that has been stolen from them. The way the film pointedly ignores these interesting, dramatic events in favour of the antics of a bunch of local bums is characteristic of punk passive-aggression. There are other passive-aggressive (there is no other word for it) touches to the film too, such as the conspicuous replacement of branded products around the set with generic, anonymized versions in blocky blue-and-white packaging, with names like "BEER" and "CORN FLAKES". The acting has a ramshackle, indie quality to it, despite the fact that investigation shows most of the cast to be fairly successful, career performers. And then there's the soundtrack. Even more than 'Sid & Nancy', 'Repo Man' is full of punk music, much of it by well known artists. The Iggy Pop song written for the opening sequence is, I gather particularly iconic.The punk sneer, though, is a tad too rigidly applied, to the extent of interfering with overall narrative coherence, and indeed enjoyment. I wanted to know more about the background story, and didn't much care about the punks in the foreground. There are some laugh-out-loud funny moments, but they are not enough to carry me. I can see why 'Repo Man' has become a cult film, but I can also see why it has never kicked on to mainstream success.

Dr. Parnell is driving a car with a trunk that lights up and disintegrates anybody who opens it. Slacker punk rocker Otto (Emilio Estevez) hates his grocery store job and gets fired. His girlfriend dumps her while sleeping with somebody else at a party. Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) tricks him to repo a car and he's not happy. His parents give away all of their money to a TV preacher and he's forced to take up on Bud's offer. Leila shows Otto a picture of aliens that is suppose to be in a car trunk and then there's a $20k bounty on a Chevy Malibu. Otto battles other repo men, his old punk friends, government agents and UFO enthusiasts as he tries to collect the huge bounty. Miller (Tracey Walter) is the spaced out mechanic at the repo lot. There are some crazy sit going on here. It's a wild irreverent indie. What it's great at is that it gets a sense of the rundown L.A. world. There are great lines like "John Wayne is a fag". It's a low rent indie and it's happy to be there. It's a little punk and something different.