This post contains all the spoilers and discusses the movie with the assumption that you've seen it. It's not so much a review but more an analysis and commentary on the ideas presented in the film. You can watch the trailer at the bottom of this post.

The Credits

Repo Man is directed by Alex Cox and stars Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash and Zander Schloss .

The Plot

A Chevy Malibu is pulled over by police while speeding on a desert highway. The driver tells the cop he shouldn't look in the trunk. He doesn't heed the warning and does so anyway. Some sort of nuclear device evaporates the cop, leaving only his boots.

Otto (Estevez) and his friend Kevin (Schloss) work at the local Pik 'n Pay. Otto tells his boss to fuck off and shoves Kevin into a stack of generic branded cans of sliced peaches when the security guard threatens him. Otto then goes to the local punk show, where for some reason people slam dance in the alley while the Circle Jerks play inside the venue. At a party that night, Otto's girlfriend Debbi asks him to get her a beer. When he returns, she is already in bed with his friend Duke.

He walks by the tracks alone with a 6-pack, feeling ostracized by his group of punk friends. Bud (Stanton) drives up, asking if he wants to make $10 driving a car. Otto takes the car and finds out Bud and his friends are repo men. He reluctantly joins this new group, a company called Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation.

Otto picks up a girl named Leila (Barash), who is running down the street. She says she has proof of aliens and it has something to do with the guy in the Chevy Malibu. Meanwhile a $20,000 award goes out for whoever repossess the Malibu. The Rodriguez brothers, rivals to the Helping Hand steal the Malibu from the gas station Kevin now works at.

Otto is kidnapped and tortured by Leila and a one armed woman who works for the government. He escapes. He goes to a repo man party at Miller's house. All the repo wives come onto him. He leaves with a 6-pack and is once again picked up by Bud. Otto, with Bud, comes across his former punk friends, who are robbing the liquor store. A Mexican standoff ensues when Bud and the security guard from the Pik 'n Pay pull guns. Except Otto and his former girlfriend Debbi, everybody gets shot, including the store clerk. Duke dies. Bud goes to the hospital.

Otto returns to the Helping Hand shop where government agents are ransacking it trying to take Marlene. Otto defeats them and takes off with Marlene and the Rodriguez brothers to the hospital. The government agents stop them. Otto thinks Bud must know where the Malibu is, but Bud is no longer is his hospital bed.

Otto returns to the garage where Bud is sitting in the Malibu, which is glowing green. Bud gets out and is shot by police from a helicopter. A priest, a rabbi and government agents all try to get in the car but all catch fire. Miller finally gets in the driver's seat. Otto joins him and the car floats up and flies away through downtown Los Angeles.

Thoughts on the Film

OK, that may be the most confusing plot summary I have given yet. I apologize if I got anything out of order. If you haven't seen the movie, this must seem like the most ridiculous plot ever. And it is a ridiculous plot. This makes it ripe for many interpretations. Where do I begin?

First, the film is hilarious in it's dialogue, subtle lines spoken in the background and generic product placement. Yes, all food items are in the same generic packaging, labeled simply with the food it contains. Otto goes home to his parents at one point and eats from a can simply labeled "food." The beer cans just say "beer." When Bud says he wants a drink, he buys a six-pack labeled "drink." The punks even sniff generic butyl nitrate. Reportedly, the generic food came about by circumstance as the only thing they could get for product placement was expired generic food from Ralph's grocery store (source). The director obviously liked the idea enough to put it throughout the film, adding in products that obviously weren't from Ralph's, making it an obvious statement against brand name consumerism.

The repo men are servants of capitalism, but do essentially the same thing as the punks, except they steal legally. But to someone having something stolen from them, the repo man and the robber are essentially the same. Otto and Bud drive around like they were working undercover in a buddy cop movie. They exist somewhere beneath the law, much like renegade cops serving their own brand of justice, but to deadbeats.

The fun is really in all the little bits of humor sprinkled through the movie. Debbi says "C'mon Duke let's go do those crimes." Duke says "Yeah, let's go get sushi and not pay." When everyone is running down the hospital stairwell, an announcement goes out over the PA to "please be quiet in the stairwell" just before everyone starts shooting guns in the stairwell. This isn't bad dialogue written by incompetent writers. Alex Cox knows how ridiculous the lines are.

Early on in the grocery store, Kevin says Otto is always tense. Later, Bud proclaims that the life of a repo man is always intense. It's this intensity that Otto looks for in punk and later as a repo man. The Circle Jerks are the band playing when Otto is outside the club in early scene. Later, the now well-dressed Otto see the Circle Jerks play as a lounge band. Otto says "I can't believe I used to like these guys." It's as if the music is no longer intense now that he has found something better to meet those needs.

It's a movie that some may be surprised to hear is loved by critics. Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars and said "Repo Man is one of those movies that slips through the cracks and gives us all a little weirdo fun" (source). Yet some wonder what critics see in such a silly often badly acted movie. Perhaps it's that the themes of consumerism and the bottom feeders of capitalism in such a weird story allow for many interpretations.

I had an odd idea while watching it for probably the 15th or 20th time last night. Perhaps the repo men are fallen angels. Yes, Bud despises both communism and religion. He says he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees. Wouldn't a fallen angel feel this way about humans who worship god? But they are also the "Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation," liberating people from their material possessions. When everyone rushes to Bud's bedside, he is gone. Someone asks where he went. The preacher on the TV says "he is risen!" Bud sacrifices himself for Otto. Miller is a philosopher mechanic, alluding to the Buddhist themes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. It is Miller who is allowed to enter the car and transport Otto to heaven (well, the sky above Los Angeles). Now I'm not going to pretend that this is what the director had in mind, but that's the fun of a movie that presents so many symbols all mashed together. It is just ripe for interpretation. Why do critics love a movie like this? Because it's fun to actually write about it.

Oh here's an odd tidbit. After this movie, the actor who played Kevin became the bass player for the Circle Jerks (source).

This trailer is the property of Universal Pictures.