Repo Man 4K

Repo Man
4K ULTRA HD + Blu-ray
Criterion
1984 / 91 min
Starring Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracy Walter
Written by Alex Cox
Photographed by Robbie Muller
Directed by Alex Cox

Repo Man is the work of a bartender with a metaphysical bent, conjuring up strange brews and even stranger stories. Alex Cox is the man in charge of that Reagan-era classic, a shaggy dog tale about some oddball Angelenos and a spacecraft disguised as a 1964 Chevy Malibu. Released in 1984, the film sums up the British director’s fragmented aesthetic; one foot in CBGB’s, the other on Altair IV.

Emilio Estevez is Otto Maddox, Professional Sad Sack—his girlfriend is a junior league Jezebel and his so-called friends are gang-bangers who’d rather knock heads than lend a hand (their violent escapades suggest a punk rock version of West Side Story). These days Otto is more lost than usual; he’s just quit his day job as stock boy for a suffocatingly bleak supermarket, the kind that attracted night crawlers like Elliot Gould in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.

Altman’s great L.A. story shared more than just grocery stores with Cox’s movie, Repo Man exists in the same Altmanesque universe where one’s fate is decided with a shakey-handed roll of the dice. Otto understands that better than most thanks to sudden encounters with a cute conspiracy theorist, a thin-skinned repossession agent, and a mysterious car cruising the mean streets of Los Angeles.

Lelia is a UFO enthusiast on the prowl for that car, a Chevy Malibu that’s leaving a trail of incinerated skeletons in its wake—she’s convinced this clunker with a death ray in its trunk is an extraterrestrial vehicle. The repo man is Bud (he’s nobody’s buddy), and he’s played by Harry Dean Stanton in what would be a signature role, except that every Harry Dean Stanton character is a signature role.

More con man than repo man, Bud tricks the none-too-bright Otto into hijacking a car away from its deadbeat owner; the ensuing chase is a standard action-movie mix of burning rubber and hairpin turns that transforms the young nihilist—Otto has found a purpose in life and an unofficial family: the men and women of the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, a collection agency located in one of L.A.’s many tumbledown strip malls. The contrast between Otto’s spiky-haired friends and these battle weary middle-agers couldn’t be more stark, but neither could their similarites. Those punks and these burn-outs are clearly before and after portraits of the same people.

The crew is as distinctive as any Altman cast but they have an amiable grindhouse allure: Sy Richardson is Lite, a fabulist with a tall tale for every occasion, he’s a streetwise Baron Munchausen; Richard Foronjy is Arnold Plettschner, the whipping boy of the crew; Tom Finnegan is Oly, the couch potato manager; and the ridiculously pretty Vonetta McGee is Marlene, bookkeeper and resident Blaxploitation icon (in one heated encounter she gets to show off her Kung fu).

The heart and soul of Repo Man belongs to Stanton, but the director’s otherworldly philosophy resides with Tracy Walter—he plays the shop mechanic Miller, an ethereal grease monkey with notions of time travel and alien aircrafts that just might prove to be correct—like Cox, he has a fragmented outlook on life, but with one foot in the gutter and the other in the clouds.

Alex Cox thumbs his nose at protocol but relies on tradition when it counts: Like any screwball comedy, Repo Man gathers all its characters into one location for the grand finale, a moonlit showdown between the Chevy and the repo men. Pulsating with an unearthly green shimmer, the car finally reveals itself for what it is, an intergalactic time machine just waiting for the right navigator. Miller takes charge and hops behind the wheel—with Otto by his side they soar above the city to parts unknown. “A repo man’s life is always intense.”

Miller’s ascension is buoyed by the music of  The Plugz, a homegrown punk band fronted by Tito Larriva who produced the film’s soundtrack album, a scrappy punk rock sampler that defines Repo Man better than any child psychologist or school counselor: vibrant, abrasive, and damn funny, the album (it was a hit before anyone had heard of the movie) includes head-slamming classics from Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and a reborn Iggy Pop who croons/screams the title song: it’s a seminal piece of Los Angeles hardcore.

A remastered version of that grand old cd is the only thing that’s missing from Criterion’s new release; it contains a striking upgrade for Robby Mueller’s luminous cinematography in both a 4K UHD and regular Blu ray disc, plus a boatload of worthy extras.

Supplements include an audio commentary featuring Cox, executive producer Michael Nesmith, casting director Victoria Thomas, and actors Sy Richardson, Zander Schloss, and Del Zamora. There are also interviews with Iggy Pop and actors Dick Rude, Olivia Barash, and Miguel Sandoval. There’s a roundtable discussion about the making of the film, featuring Cox, Richardson, Rude, Zamora, and producers Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks.

The highlight (perhaps even more of a highlight than the film itself) is a conversation between McCarthy and Harry Dean Stanton at his apex, benevolent yet suffering no fools, he’s my kind of Buddhist. The full list of extras can be found here.

Here’s Josh Olson on Repo Man: