"Repo Man" - Film Review

Repo Man is tonally and structurally one of the most bizarre films I've seen. It never comfortably figures out what exactly it wants to be. It's funny, with a satirical bent at times (mocking consumerism and conformity), but it's also very dark, weird, and offputting. And It's constructed with such looseness and aimlessness that it's hard to know what we're supposed to take away from the film.

Emilo Estevez plays Otto, a would-be slacker who decides to start repossessing cars when his parents blow their money on donations to one of those television churches. Most of the film is watching him learn the ropes of the repo life, but there's a story playing out in the background about aliens whose remains have been smuggled out of Area 51. These extraterrestrial remains are in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu with a high repo bounty on it, and so in time Otto's path crosses with it.

It's as weird as it sounds and never compromises to be normal or predictable. It's also pulpy; mixing the seedy, the trashy, and the visually lucid. And for some its strange, punk, anarchic sensibility will surely ring true for them, but for myself, I'm still a little uncertain.

Grade: B-