Repo Chick

In the not too distant future of an alternate reality, a Paris Hilton-like celebrity cut off from her fortune discovers she has a knack for the repossession business after joining a firm which not only has cars in its holding yard but also factories, cruise ships and what might be a nuclear power plant. Enticed by a million dollar bounty on a vintage train, she ends up in the middle of a terrorist plot to force the President of the United States to outlaw golf and become a vegan.

This movie isn't so much a "Repo Man" sequel as it is a remake taken to ridiculous extremes at the expense of things like plot, character development and cinematography. It's loaded with references and parallels to "Repo Man" and at least 8 actors from the original (not including Cox) appear here as well. I got a big kick out of this, but it will obviously be lost on anyone who isn't a "Repo Man" fan and won't appeal to many of those who are, so we have a movie that by design has been made primarily for the benefit of a small subset of the small cult following of the original.

The movie is unique, however, in the way it creates the fantasy world in which the action takes place. A surreal environment is produced by being filmed entirely in green screen with the floors and backgrounds added later. Although the opening scenes are made to look almost realistic, the movie increasingly uses obvious toy models and cartoon animations as it progresses. Most of the film's entertainment value comes from accepting this alternate reality as a place which is at least possible in our imaginations even if completely implausible in the real world.

The point of the movie, of course, isn't the thin, absurd plot but the satire which gets leveled at many aspects of modern society. I would assume that the shallow and fictitious nature of the environment created in the film is supposed to represent those same qualities in the targets being satirized. Topics such as celebrity culture, heartless corporations, liberal activists and homeland security all get the Cox treatment. Unfortunately, it's done without the depth, coherence and brilliantly insightful dialog found throughout "Repo Man". Although I very much appreciate all the things Cox was trying to do, I would still find it hard to recommend this movie without attaching numerous qualifications to such a recommendation.

I *really* wanted to like this movie. In the short period from 1984 to 1987, Alex Cox gave us the Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell, and Walker (yes, I even liked Walker!). He's sort of foundered ever since, and I was hoping this might be his redemption. I was destined to be very disappointed.

First there's the filming technique. It's done almost entirely on green screen, and then set against backgrounds mostly made of models, many of them literally model train sets. This all seemed naggingly familiar, then hit it hit me: the great Alex Cox had ripped off Thomas the Tank Engine! I guess this was supposed to be surreal and artsy, but it just looked cheap and stupid. Reportedly, he did this to stay below the $200k threshold of the Screen Actors Guild. The thing is, Repo Man was filmed for $160k and (even correcting for inflation) looks about 20 times more professional than this movie.

Although this isn't really a sequel, he puts in a number of the people from the original, but this mostly reminds you that they haven't worked much since. There are also some fairly big name actors, like Patricia Arquette, Karen Black, Chloe Webb, and Miguel Sandoval, and they're completely wasted - with the arguable exception of Sandoval, who does a fairly decent job. It shot in 10 days, using what appears to be a rough draft of a concept for a script. It appears they also did it Ed Wood style, always using the first take.

The plot is a weird mix of heavy handed social commentary and a desperate attempt to capture the quirky magic of Repo man, and it fails at both. Because it's trying so hard, it also fall short in the "so bad it's good" category.

Finally, the music, or lack of it. The iconic soundtrack was the magic pixie dust that turned Repo Man into a timeless gem, and a good soundtrack could even have saved this, at least at some level. However, what little music there is is clearly designed to *remind* us of the original, without stepping on any copyrights or paying any musicians. In the end, that was the last nail in the coffin.

I suppose if you're an Alex Cox fan, you have no choice but to watch this movie, but don't say you weren't warned.

After hearing for years about the rumors of a sequel to "Repo Man," one of the most out-there plot-driven insanely fabulous film from the 80's, and that it would be directed by Alex Cox, the godfather of punk films, I waited as delay after delay after delay came and went, and then finally - the promotional artwork for it arrived.

Then I saw the poster. Oh my god.

Was this a joke? Was I being punk'd by a lame over-hyped actor/model type on a now dead and useless music television show? Sadly, I was not.

This disaster - this is the only way I can be honest and describe it - is somehow only tied in to the original film by name and just only a microhair of it's plot included.

I sad down and tried - TRIED - to understand the idea behind the scenes of this "creation," but was so overwhelmingly bad, so mind-numbingly awful, that as soon as it was over I wanted to buy a gun, wait the 30 days alone in my room to own it, and then go to the store, buy it, bring it home, open the box, load the gun with a specially made hollow-point mercury-tipped bullet, and then aim it at my head and pull the trigger.

I will NOT give you any details of the plot (oh yeah, right, there's a PLOT...) whatsoever, because anything I'd tell you would be too stupid to be believed or just too sad to describe here and make you enjoy the original Repo less, as it has done for me.

All I can say is that if you ever - EVER - actually find yourself in a position to see this "film," please PLEASE be ready to be disappointed.

I sat through this with all the hope and faith in Alex, but by the end credits I felt more like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" in full torture mode, and I lost my eyedropper of saline solution some time back.

This isn't even worthy of fan submission sequels on any level. There were almost no original scenes "filmed" as it was 95% green-screen, the kiss of death for even the newest rookie of directors, and the acting? Positively awful.

It was if Katy Perry was given a chance to drip her pink bubblegum paintbrush of awfulness over some simplistic and sad video directing 101 class at some suburban community college, complete with student actors, veteran actors' talents who are completely wasted, and then there's Karen Black - ecch oh my god WHAT IS GOING ON HERE????????? I want to give it 1 out of ten, but that would almost insult anyone at the bottom who earnestly tried to make a cohesive film and failed miserably.

This video "film" looks cheap, amateurish, and thought out with all the brain power it took to push this out of their anus before flushing it down onto Netflix, or whatever fools bought into this horrible horrible excuse for "entertainment." I've seen fake Russian roulette snuff videos with more thought out ideas.

Sorry, I do feel really bad if you had anything to do with it, especially as an actor, because this has fail fail fail written all over it, and when you make up your resume for your next tryout for a film, leave this off of it.

This creatively bankrupt "film" will make you never want to try to do anything positive in your life ever again, and finally - please sue Alex Cox for your almost two hours back of your life, please?

Alex Cox pastiche on the zero digital decade where the only values worth pursing are money, celebrity and cutting edge technology. He films this entirely on green screen to show the banal crowd pleasing depths that modern cinema has fallen into in the nothing noughties. Next up is Repo 3-D starring a busty 33DD babe fighting the PC Thought Police Force who want to repo the wearing of bra's as they are demeaning to 21st Century Woman. He will film this masterpiece on his state-of-the-art camera cell phone with a budget courtesy of the **** network who will only ask that 50% of the running time will be used up with close-up shots of their current hot must-have smartphone packages to please the Androids at the multi-plex.

I am a big fan of Alex Cox the movie connoisseur, the long time presenter of the Moviedrome series on British television dedicated to cult and obscure films. Each film he would introduce cult classic and give us an interesting insight on the night's film. Cox showed passion, intelligence and a respect for some of the actors and directors of cultish cinema.

Alex Cox the film director has always fallen short. He showed promise with his first feature with Repo Man, a flawed cult film itself. However films such as Walker or Straight to Hell showed us an uneven even an overindulgent filmmaker playing by his own rules.

By the early 1990s it was clear Cox was no longer welcome by the big film studios as he was heading south making Spanish language cinema in Mexico whereas director's such as Robert Rodriguez were heading the other direction.

In Repo Chick, Cox revisits the themes from Repo Man but turns it into satire on celebrity culture, banking crisis and corrupt politics.

A dispossessed heiress joins the Repo business. She ends up on a trip on a train which gets hijacked by terrorists who want to outlaw golf.

The movie is filmed entirely on Green Screen with some use of animation. The CGI can look off putting and also shows its low budget origins. It certainly is not a mainstream film even though Cox got the BBC to be a co-producer of the movie. Its uneven, unfocused but it has a charm and some well known actors, although it does confirm that Cox's best days as a director are well behind him.