Critics Can't Wait to Give Back Repo Men

Repo Men, a sci-fi thriller about men who repossess organs, is probably supposed to be biting commentary on divisive issues like health care, but critics are united in shouting it down:

• “Let the 2010 Razzies race begin!” declares Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter. “Blood soaked, derivative and increasingly ridiculous,” Repo Men is an “in-your-face mess that never knows what it wants to be when it grows up” and telegraphs its plot twists “a century in advance."

• On paper, the cast—Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber—looks great, but this “heartless piece of hack work” demeans them, writes Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. “Note to studio: get a soul transplant.”
• The movie “sacrifices subtlety for the obvious, and originality for the tried-and-true—or, more often, the tried-and-trite,” writes Stephen Whitty of the Star-Ledger. “It’s a film to be endured more than experienced.”
• Roger Ebert can’t figure out if the film’s supposed to be a comedy. When Law decapitates three people with one swing of a hacksaw, he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, “what are people supposed to think? Is this an action scene, or satire? Does it make any difference?”

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