Better Late Than Never on "Repo Man"

For a while now my brother has been telling me to watch the movie "Repo Man". So I remedied that and watched it last weekend and I have some thoughts.

First off, I enjoyed my viewing. This movie is from 1984 and it definitely shows. The graphics are incredibly old school, and that is a benefit for this movie. I liked how low fi and cheap, in a good way, the effects and the scenery looked. I have to imagine that the director and scout location people purposefully found rough looking neighborhoods. I appreciated that the locations felt and looked real as well. There didn't seem to be anything fake or CGI in this movie. That is one of the things I like about movies from the 70's and 80's, the look. Everything looks real. The effects are practical and the locations are real. They don;t do this anymore in movies and I miss that.

I also liked the acting from the two main characters, Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. Sure there are other actors in the movie, but they play cliched characters, on purpose, but this movie is all about the two stars.

Emilio Estevez looks so young and so green in the movie. He truly nailed it as the young punk who goes corporate. I really liked his first scene, where he is stacking cans at his job, and he gets let go. He doesn't say anything, he just suplexes his coworker, the boss's son, and then gives his boss and the security guard the finger as he walks out. We then see him in an outside mosh pit listening to punk rock on the radio with his buddies. We know pretty much everything about him right away, and he barely speaks two lines of dialogue to this point.

After his night of moshing, we meet Harry Dean Stanton, who tricks him into repossessing a car for him. Harry Dean Stanton lies about his wife being in labor, he convinces Estevez to help him out for some money, and when he gets caught lying, he just brushes it off and eventually convinces Estevez to come work for him.

From here on out this movie is insane. I mean, the first scene we see a guy look into a trunk and get vaporized, but that was just the start. After Estevez goes to work with the repo men, and women, a bunch of wild stuff happens. Estevez's buddies become hard core robbers, but their robbery attempts are hilarious. I know that it is meant to be funny, but it still made me laugh so hard everytime. They would have conversations, and then walk right into a convenience store and rob it. Then Estevez meets his love interest while driving a repossessed car, and they fight and then inexplicably have sex in the backseat of the car. He continues to chase her, but we learn that she works for the government in some capacity involving aliens. At one point in this movie Estevez has a conversation with his parents about going to Paris, like they promised him in the past. They admit that they don't have the money for it anymore, and they just go about their evening, continuing to watch tv. Estevez has these in depth conversations with one of the dudes at the repo spot who looks like he burns stuff for fun and does trash duty. The other repo men play pranks on him when he starts working there. The repo men get into random fights with people that they assume haven't paid their bills. And, the guy driving the car at the beginning, the one with the trunk that vaporizes people, comes back and wreaks havoc on the main town. One of Estevez's homies gets vaporized. Another one dies in a shootout at a convenience store. His "girlfriend" allows him to get kidnapped and tested on by the government. The guy driving the car dies, but not before having what seemed like a very important talk with Estevez. This conversation made no sense, but that is what I expected from this movie. And when they eventually find the car they have been looking for, it turns into a flying apparatus, and Estevez and the trash guy from the repo spot fly off into the night. Harry Dean Stanton gets merked trying to take the car, Estevez's "girlfriend" gets left behind. We never see his parents again. The other people who work at the repo spot have a massive fist fight with one another. The movie goes off the rails, but in the best way possible.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It was so ridiculous, but that is what made it so much fun. We don't make movies like this anymore, and that bums me out. Go check out "Repo Man". It is a dope throwback of a movie and you will have as much fun as I did when you watch. 

Ty 

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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