The Repossession Mambo vs. Repo Men

This a split review of the movie and the book it is based off of. (Heavy Spoilers Ahead)

Don't get me wrong, Repo Men was an ok movie at best with a creative concept. It has great characters and the story is engaging up until the little plot twist that drives the last 30 min. of the movie. But, the movie could have been so much more. It could have given me more Jude Law and Forest Whitaker screen time. They were great together. Even at the end where you find one chasing after the other to take a heart back to the Union, they were fighting but the friendship was still very much intact.

The movie focuses on Remy(Jude Law). Remy is a man working for the Union in a world where there is an organ shortage, which causes companies to step forward with mechanical organs that are not only resourceful--they are far superior to regular organs. They have the capabilities of keeping someone alive beyond their years. The only problem is they are extremely expensive and the interest rates are ridiculous. There is a 90 day grace period if you fall behind on payments. After the 90 days are up--A REPO MAN WILL COME AND YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT SURGERY, SURGERY. (Sorry RTGO fans, I had to).

Remy gets himself shocked on one of his last repo jobs and it forces him to undertake a Jarvik-13(mechanical heart). He falls behind on payments and then goes on the lamb. The movie focuses heavily on the chase. The book, on the other hand, focuses on the back story that got him to where he is.

The Repossession Mambo is confusing to follow at first until you realize that you are reading the manuscript of  a book the narrator is writing as it is being typed. The book will jump from his past, which he is typing for his son he never gets to see, and will quickly jump to the present of him hiding in shady apartments and basements to hide from the repo men and Geneco ( I mean the Union. The patients are also addicted to Q instead of Zydrate. In this book's defense, it was written and/or thought about a few years before the stage play happened). The book one ups the movie and focuses heavily on the relationships that got the narrator to where he is. You see the origins of Jake and the narrator's friendship and all of the marriages and failures at love the narrator has experienced.

The narrator has been married 5 times and has divorced for 5 different reasons. Some of the reasons are hilarious, some sad, and one very notably is horrific. The theme throughout the book, though, is that the narrator has the capability for love. He finds it in the one woman he does not marry, bonnie. Bonnie is similar to Beth in the movie. Beth is actually a prostitute in the book who we only see for 20 pages tops. Bonnie is a girl fitted with every artiforg(mechanical organ) you can think of except for her lips(sort of) and her heart, which is all natural.

Other than a few origin stories, the end of the book kind of plays out the same way the movie does. It is a little more gruesome, but neural nets as featured in the movie are not  mentioned or I did not notice them. If you have seen the movie, you understand my hatred for the involvement of the nets in the final climax. You are forced to sit through a half hour of a movie that really never happened. It may work for every other action movie or any old action movie, but this movie didn't want to be any old action movie. It just ended that way. The only neat thing the movie has is an intense sex scene involving Remy and Beth. It is disturbing, but kind of hot. The book ends differently.

The narrator is about to go off on a conquest to push the plot line in the movie's direction. He goes to say goodbye to Bonnie before he is knocked out. He wakes up in surgery. To save him instead of vice versa, Bonnie has gotten a doctor to switch out the narrator's mechanical heart for her natural one. He never sees her again, he gets to be free of the Union's chase and ultimately retains his friendship with Jake (Forest Whitaker's character in the movie). It was a surprise and gave me one of the few great endings you find in books, lately.

Repo Men 2.5/5     The Repossession Mambo 5/5