Repo man

United States, 1984

Film
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A groundbreaking movie that introduced a punk sensibility to the film noir genre. Otto (Emilio Estevez) is a bored young man, just fired from his job in a supermarket, who meets up with a smooth-talking loner (Harry Dean Stanton) who recruits him as a “repo man”: a repossesor of cars because of default of payment. The strange plot involves aliens, Government spies and assorted punks and gangsters all searching for a 1964 Chevy Malibu which may hold the secret of life and death. The plot, however, doesn’t really matter. What does is the assured surreal landscape that Alex Cox discovers in the underbelly of suburban Los Angeles, and his irreverent experiments with genre. The LA of Repo Man is a disintegrating city, violent and alienated, but the film manages to undiscover a weird and sometimes eloquent beauty in the decay. The soundtrack, featuring US independant punk music from bands like Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag and Iggy Pop is outstanding.

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Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

director

Alex Cox

co-producer

Peter McCarthy

Jonathan Wacks

production company

Edge City Productions

Michael Nesmith Productions

Duration

01:29:00:00

Production places
United States
Production dates
1984

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

304287

Language

English

Audience classification

R (18+)

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

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If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/83096--repo-man/ |title=Repo man |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=29 May 2023 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}