| Script Review: Jude Law and Forest Whitaker's Repossession Mambo | ||||
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Repossession Mambo, an interesting title for a very interesting script. Based on the soon to be released novel by Eric Garcia (Matchstick Men), Repossession Mambo is set to star Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber. {sidebar id=1}At the helm is first time feature film director Michael Sapochnik. Its got plenty of violence, blood, scalpels and love. What more could you ask for? Due out from Universal Pictures 2009, Repossession Mambo is bound to dance its way into artificial hearts everywhere. See what Mr. E has to say about it below Mr. E here. MR. E LEADS - SPOILERS FOLLOW REPOSESSION MAMBO begins in a rotting rat's nest of a hell hotel where we find REMY, our buck nekkid antihero. He's doing the Ewan MacGregor in MOULIN ROGUE! thing, pecking away on an antique typewriter, narrating the movie. His story begins in another crappy rotting hotel room, as a HOOKER and her JOHN go at it, as REMY, all RORSHARCH-like looks in from the fire escape. REMY breaks into the room, announces boldly he is with the Credit Union", TASERs the poor schlub into unconsciousness puts on an apron like it's Barbeque Rib night at the chain restaurant I'm not naming and goes in for the slice and dice with an expando-lamp and a shiny scalpel. The HOOKER, apparently with a heart of gold (it's a well-known figure of speech, but in this movie, as you'll learn, it's entirely possible I'm not being figurative here) hits REMY upside the head, protecting the anonymous man who paid in advance. REMY slams her up against a wall and politely informs her he's just here for Mr. Deep-Fried & Unconscious. He didn't pay his bills and now he's here to collect what is rightfully his. He grabs his scalpel, slices the guy in the belly and digs into his gut, and pulls out...We go to another scene where the recently removed organ is washed in a sink, revealing something strange and metal underneath. What the hell? This is your, captain, Mr. E speaking. Please fasten your seatbelts and return your tray tables to a full and upright position upright because its going to be a bumpy ride! The job over, REMY goes to the office-in this case, its CREDIT UNION #418 stuck in the middle of some typically godforsaken suburban Mall-exactly like the one right next to where you live. He makes his way past the adorable company Mascots LARRY THE LUNG and HARRY THE HEART, the pathetic infirm and elderly customers, and the slimy salesmen pitching poor desperate families the CREDIT UNION's product: Artificial Organs. The "ARTIFORGS" are pricey and the sales terms are so beyond outrageous even loan sharks are scared: 39 or so percent APR, and after the final nonpayment letters are sent and when it gets to be the seventh month, let's just say TCU will be coming to get its goodies back, with or without your permission and with or without your life intact. And that's REMY's life. He has a co-worker/best friend from childhood/fellow ex-US Military grunt named JAKE FRIEVALD, a couple of scary additional REPO MEN associates, FRANK-TCU's sleazy Manager/Sales pro and CAROL, his embittered woman and a son-PETER. I'll be blunt. I really liked REPOSESSION MAMBO. It's a darkly funny and bloody hard-edged Science Fiction satire, like RoboCop, with THE CREDIT UNION taking the place of OCP Omni Consumer Products. The more I thought about the film, the more dystopian sci-fi movies I was able to draw comparisons to. There's some NINETEEN EIGHTY- FOUR and BRAZIL and some MINORITY REPORT, there's a little THE MATRIX and some LOGAN'S RUN and BLADE RUNNER, too. There's nothing wrong with this film being so reminiscent of all of those other films, instead, the world of REMY and his REPO MEN seem as if they could be taking place at the same time as many of the films I've listed above, just in a different city and that's a really cool crossover thing to think about. After I started reading the script, I got an email from a sweaty and anonymous source we'll call "Mykelle Eisner" telling me I should look up Repo! The Genetic Opera. A few trips around the Internet later, I discovered Repo! The Genetic Opera is a rock musical about REPO MEN that reclaim...dum dum dummm-artificial organs from a high tech company (actual musical content may vary). REPO! the musical had its origins as early as 2002 on the LA stage circuit. Okay, now I was really curious now-which came first-REPOSSESSION MAMBO or Repo! The Genetic Opera? I can't be sure but my script and IMDB.com state the movie is based on the book by Eric Garcia-which, according to Amazon.com and www.ericgarcia.com, doesn't exist. Weird, huh? Well, come to find after some further digging that word on the street is the book is due out in 4-5 months. The paperback release will apparently coincide with the film release. Go figure. Anyway, back to the movie, the heartless REMY and JAKE spend about 20 to 30 minutes, scouring their scummy environs with an ARTIFORG scanner that detects overdue organs. They knock back a few drinks, REMY flashbacks to BETH, his first wife BETH, a real "pro" of a woman-yes, that's right-she's a prostitute. Geez, this movie has more hookers than a round of PGA golf, and the two repo men manage to find a hotel with twenty-two CREDIT UNION deadbeat customers and within minutes, the place is filled with twenty-two dead. To paraphrase the opening crawl from BLADE RUNNER: This was not called execution. It was called repossession. These guys are heartless killers and they don't care-they are just doing a job.
In a particularly painful scene, REMY wakes up from the record producers home to find he is now in the hospital. His own heart is a fried mess because his TASER backfired and exploded on him. FRANK, his co-worker/Credit Union sales manager, starts into REMY, trying to talk him into getting a new CU ARTIFORG heart. REMY refuses and attempts to get out of his bed and leave the hospital. He doesnt make it and crashes onto the floor and begins to crawl out of his room. Hours later, after being stepped over and ignored by the hospital staff, he wearily agrees to the new ARTIFORG and signs away his life. Now hes not just an employee of THE CREDIT UNION-hes also a client! After a quick recuperation, REMY goes back to kill, I mean, work, grabbing his next assignment without even looking at the details. His next job is more of a patchwork piece than THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS' SALLY with over 15 ARTIFORGs. When REMY finds the pathetic wretch of a wench he is supposed to off, he is horrified to discover, oh crap, it's the love of his life, BETH, his former wife that left him when he was off with JAKE in Africa fighting an unnamed war. And here's where REMY discovers he can't pull the trigger, and he has to not only let BETH live, but he has to help her get better. As BETH heals under REMY's watchful care, REMY finds it's becoming more and difficult for him to perform the functions of his job: first he gets the Tom Hanks in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN shakes and soon he has to just let his assignments go. We've all seen this moral U-Turn in other films before, like the aforementioned LOGAN'S RUN or MINORITY REPORT, but what puts REMY and REPOSSESSION MAMBO above the rest is that his actions are not motivated by the need to save his own ass. Along the way, an angry CAROL goes by the wayside and she takes PETER with her. Despite his nearly non-relationship with his son, THE REMSTER still misses him. Of course, like LOGAN the Sandman, REMY has his FRANCIS in JAKE, who knows REMY is harboring fugitive BETH and doesn't like it one bit. Additionally, since REMY isn't working, he's not making any payments on HIS ARTIFORG heart. The months pass quickly and as BETH recovers, REMY's account becomes due and he, too becomes a fugitive. ITS THE END OF THE SPOILERS AS WE KNOW IT This is where the big action kicks in and there is a lot of it. Many miles for REMY and BETH and many pages for Mr. E later, I found the didnt-it-blow-your-mind ending to be entirely satisfying. The flicks conclusion evoked some of the previously mentioned stories (Im not telling you which ones, so dont ask) and left me with a big smile. Im really looking forward to this movie. According to IMDB Pro, Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are signed on for REPOSSESSION MAMBO and my guess is theyll be playing REMY and JAKE, respectively. I looking forward to seeing Jude playing the redemptive and, although I cant see Forest Whitaker as Jake (I see someone like the slightly manic Jake Busey), Im sure Mr. Whitaker will come up with a solid performance. Ive also never heard of the director, Miguel Sapochnik. Im hoping he has a good eye and the studio puts enough money behind this flick to make it look really good. Im worried that, although they say, If it aint on the page, it aint on the stage, if REPOSESSION MAMBO has only a mediocre director and a miniscule budget, this hard R rated wicked and wild script could sadly become a pathetic shell of a movie in dire need of its own ARTIFORG to survive. Lets hope it doesnt come to this. I give REPOSSESSION MAMBO a Michael Radfords NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR out of a possible ROBOCOP or 8.5 Stars out of 10. REPOSESSION MAMBO By Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner No date Mr. E would like to thank Dr. Temperance Brennan and her staff at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, DC, for their assistance with the medical terminology such as deep-fried used in this review.
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When REMY goes on a pick up from famed record producer JIMMY T BONE, something goes horribly wrong. But first, we pause for a moment to flashback to some of REMY's military training. With a great scene that features a row of sterilized baseball bats. Im sure the bats are a direct reference to "The Simpsons" episode The Homer They Fall, in which Dr. Hibbert pulls a "sterile 2x4" out of a plastic wrap and whacks Homer upside the head.
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