Repo Man: the Genetic Opera - Review

Okay I like quirky stylish movies as much as anyone else, but found the style over substance of Repo Man diverting but… This had got to be the most self-indulgent, “fuck you” movies ever made. Repo Man is quite visually stunning, a bit of goth rock opera drenched in blood, drugs, and lots and lots of beating, pulsating body parts and steaming intestines. In fact the plot is fairly traditional, family betrayal, innocence vs. evil, lies and cover-ups, diverging and converging plotlines. It’s probably one of the darkest movies you’ll ever see (I mean literally) the whole movie is dingy shadows and back alleys, sordid nightclubs and darkened secret rooms.

There is some plot, kind of, most of the main characters have been trapped in this spiral of revenge and betrayal, very operatic, out of it all came a child though, Shilo, and now that she’s pretty much all grown up and everything about to come full circle. There are incidentally some redeeming themes a send up of consumerism, vanity, and the price we’re willing to pay for looking good. Paris Hilton has a part as the King/CEO’s daughter, a drug and plastic surgery addict. Actually Paris is fairly harmless in the part, her vapid self-centeredness, and shallowness a nice bit of type casting.

The company (Genco) has come to power after the world faces an epidemic of organ failures (never really explained) and Genco is more than happy to provide new ones at a price, but fall behind on a payment and the Repo Man is liable to track you down and hack out your defaulted organs. But not stopping at replacement organs, Genco has created a world where people can get plastic surgery at the drop of a hat, new addictive and expensive drugs allow you to slip on a new face, as easily as putting on makeup.

I kept wondering though how did they get this cast? Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag, Paul Sorvino as the corrupt King/CEO, did these people really know what they were signing up for? One blessing for Sarah Brightman is that under her heavy makeup and trippy contact lenses you don’t even recognize her. Paul Sorvino doesn’t get off so easy, he’s definitely playing a typical mobster and indulging his flair for opera – I hope he got a good paycheck. Having such a good cast though for this film just gives it a sense of being even more a vanity production than it probably is, but it makes you wonder.

The person who carries the move though is Anthony Head, who most would remember from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Rupert Giles the Watcher/Librarian. He’s the title character and father of Shilo, he used to be friends with the King/CEO who was about to get married until his wife met his friend then she dumped him for the new guy. There’s another wedding, but it soon goes tragic when the ex slips some poison into the brides medicine so that the new husband/ex friend believes he’s killed her. He has to slice open his wife, sacrificing her life to save the baby. The King/CEO then guilt trips him into working as his Repo Man. So the Repo Man lives this double life killing people and ripping out innards by night and being an overprotective smothering father by day. He seems torn, but gets off on it all a bit too much. To top it all off there’s blind Mag, ex-best friend of the bride, who was given new eyes by Genco, who now owns her soul. She never knew about Shilo, and feels bad since she was supposed to look after her and be her god mother. When Blind Mag decides to retire, the CEO/King decides to execute the fine print and call out his Repo Man to take back the eyes. Blind Mag rips them out herself on stage during the nightly “Genetic Opera” and is still killed.

I won’t give away the ending here -- but it’s unsatisfying.

This movie owes a LOT to Rocky Horror picture show, the sense of sexually charged high style, the bawdy rock music driving the action. Even though it’s supposed to be dealing with events that affect the globe, it feels claustrophobic (it was a play first). Even the final climatic scenes in the Genetic Opera are borrowed heavily from the final theater scenes in Rocky. This movie really wants to be this generations Rocky Horror. But the problem with cult movies is that they’re not made, but just happen. But to delve too much into the movie is to give it substance that isn’t really there.

The real star of this movie is death, blood and guts. People are often casually dispatched just to give the actors some blood and guts to role around in. There’s a fondness for sticky gooey organs, and removing them while people are still alive. It’s so desensitizing though and so over the top you soon get used to it. When you get to the final daughter/father scene at the end, you almost don’t even realize they’re covered in blood and guts in a sea of gore. As an attempt at some sort of street cred, it uses several graphic novel devices, especially in flashbacks to tell back stories. It’s almost as if they’re trying to convince you that it was actually based on something. There was a play first, and perhaps the obvious artifice of the stage gave it some balance, but the movie is unrelenting in being gritty and real – but totally unbelievable.

There is some talent behind the camera, the Director is Darren Bousman from the Saw series, but where this sort of thing works as hyperrealism, it gets a bit much as musical goth dinner theater.

Overall though worth seeing just as a cultural event, and the yuck factor, a big bonus though too is getting to see Paris Hilton embarrass herself as a singer on stage, when her face falls off in the middle of her song.

Actually this musical number by Sarah Brightman is a highlight:



Here’s a feel for the whole movie:



... and yes that is Joan Jet, she does a cameo on one of the numbers.