R, 92 min.
Director/Writer: Alex Cox
Starring: Emilio Estevez,
Harry Dean Stanton, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash, Sy Richardson, Susan Barnes,
Fox Harris, Tom Finnegan, Del Zamora, Eddie Velez, Zander Schloss, Jennifer
Balgobin, Dick Rude, Miguel Sandoval, Vonetta McGee
In high school, my friends
and I would imagine that the Sheen family (Martin Sheen and Charlie Sheen) name
was actually Sheen rather than Estevez and act out a scene about Emilio
changing his name from Sheen to Estevez. At that point in time, it would’ve
made no sense. No actor who wanted to make a name for himself would change his
name from a respectable and established Hollywood white name like Sheen to
something of obvious ethnicity like Estevez. We would even play it as if his
first name was actually Steve—or something closer to the white norm of Martin
and Charlie—and he purposely changed it to Emilio Estevez as some strange act
of rebellion.
I think the true reason—beyond
our own undying silliness—for this imagined fiction from us was that we were
such fans of the actor for one film he did that was itself a rebellious outcry
over the ridiculousness of Hollywood conformity. “Repo Man” was a cinematic
anthem for us as teens. We were white teens from a predominantly white
community, comfortably established in the middle class, protected by our
parents true caring for us, with no real reason to rebel at all. We dabbled in
strange haircuts, rode skateboards, ticked off bank managers by playing on
their fears of liability injury claims from skating in their parking lots, and
worshiped films like Alex Cox’s “Repo Man” and “Sid and Nancy”.
Of course, the actor whose
work really spoke to us from this movie is Harry Dean Stanton. He’s the
grizzled veteran—a philosopher—who still has a finger placed in the middle of
his fist to throw up at authority and conformity and any “ity” that gets in his
way. Esteves was the punk, but Stanton was the rule the breaks the rules. Only
Stanton could make a movie about a car loaded with dead aliens that may be a
time machine speak to teenaged white boys looking for a reason to rebel and
make it work. Plus, he has some great lines.
“Repo Man” is one of those
films that plays as something other than it is if you don’t know how to watch
it properly. It seems like a B exploitation movie with bad acting, a ridiculous
plot, and some inexplicable developments. But, what it really is is all those
things with a brain. Cox pulls off some wonderful direction in his feature
debut. He just makes it look like trash because it shouldn’t look good. And of
course, his production design is brilliant. A lot of people might not remember
those generic food labels these days, but his choice to make every food and
beverage product generic is a brilliant kick in the face to product placement
and consumerism in general, and he accentuates this detail by making the items
even more generic than they would be in the real world. When Estevez pulls a
can out of his parents’ pantry labeled simply “Food”, you know you aren’t
dealing with your average exploitation flick.
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