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REPO MEN Not to be confused with 1984's dissimilar Repo Man but easily able to be mixed up with 2008's identically plotted Repo! The Genetic Opera, Repo Men mostly plays like an uninspired rip-off of Logan's Run plus Brazil plus Total Recall plus Monty Python's The Meaning of Life plus ... well, I could do this all day. Suffice it to say that there's little here to excite anyone except maybe the gorehounds. A futuristic saga with more blood than brains, this centers on Remy (Jude Law), whose career as a repo man for a company called The Union means that whenever someone falls behind on their payments for the mechanical organs keeping them healthy, it's his job to track the person down and forcibly remove the expensive piece of hardware by any means necessary (as expected, the client often doesn't survive the procedure). Like any good citizen of this country, Remy only cares about things that directly affect him, so it's only after he's injured and subsequently outfitted with a new heart he can't afford that he thinks, "Hey, maybe what I've been doing to people isn't so nice!" No kidding. Now equipped with a self-serving conscience, he finds himself on the run, being chased by his partner and best friend, Jake (Forest Whitaker). Whitaker's inventive performance is an asset, but Repo Men, based on Eric Garcia's novel The Repossession Mambo, isn't able to take its potentially provocative storyline past the alternately silly, lazy and illogical scripting by Garrett Lerner and Garcia himself. To be sure, there are moments of inspiration (the child surgeon, for example), but for the most part, here's another piece of clunky sci-fi hardware that could use an overhaul. **
SHUTTER ISLAND Just how obvious is the big "twist" that concludes Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel? So obvious that some folks who haven't read the book are figuring it out simply by watching the trailer. But just how accomplished is the picture anyway? Enough that viewers will happily be led down the rabbit hole by a director with the ability to distract them with every technique at his disposal. Delivering yet another topnotch performance that might help him win some sort of lifetime achievement award before he even hits 40, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. federal marshal who, with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travels to a mental asylum located on a remote island off the Massachusetts coastline. The year is 1954, and the lawmen are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. But although the head of the facility (Ben Kingsley) assures them that they'll have the full cooperation of the entire staff, it soon becomes apparent that everyone has something to hide, and Teddy must suss out the truth even while plagued by debilitating headaches, gruesome flashbacks to his World War II years, and disturbing hallucinations involving his deceased wife (Michelle Williams). Scorsese's in pulp fiction mode here (see also Cape Fear and The Departed), which essentially means that this is one of those pleasing instances when "B"-movie material is given the "A"-list treatment. The screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis is packed with so much intriguing incident that it's easy to not even notice the plotholes until post-movie reflection, and all the craftspeople who won Oscars for Scorsese's The Aviator are back on board, resulting in an immaculate presentation that fully engages the senses. And while the major plot pirouette will disappoint discerning viewers, it's followed by an ambiguous coda that insures all moviegoers will exit the Island with at least something to ponder. ***
THE WOLFMAN Loosely based on the 1941 classic The Wolf Man, this disappointing new take casts Benicio Del Toro in Lon Chaney Jr.'s iconic role of Lawrence Talbot, the British-born nobleman who returns to his family estate after spending most of his life in the United States. Estranged from his aloof father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), Lawrence prefers the company of his late brother's fiancee, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), but he fears for her safety after a wound from a ferocious creature periodically turns him into a monster. Although he's physically right for the role, Del Toro's line readings are unbearably stilted, and he brings none of the playfulness that Chaney contributed in his rendition. In short, he's a brooding bore. Fresh from triumphing as the title character in The Young Victoria, Blunt is alarmingly one-note, hampered by a sketchy part that allows her to do little more than pout and fret. As for Hopkins, he's clearly indifferent to the whole project, and one suspects his eyes kept darting back and forth between the dopey script in one hand and the hefty paycheck in the other as he mulled over whether to accept the part. The makeup design by Rick Baker is excellent, although the transformation scenes aren't nearly as thrilling as the pivotal one in 1981's An American Werewolf in London (for which Baker won the first of his six Oscars). Yet what sinks the film on the technical side is the abundance of CGI effects; these simply come off as (no pun intended) overkill, with Johnston pouring on the gore in an effort to disguise the fact that the picture contains nothing in the way of genuine suspense or scares. Johnston's heavy use of cheap "gotcha!" moments (i.e. when the setting is quiet and then something suddenly LEAPS! into the frame or DASHES! across the screen) likewise points to his inability to coax any authentic reactions out of audience members, who will probably be too busy tittering at the risible dialogue anyway to concentrate on much else. As for the epic battle pitting werewolf versus werewolf -- well, let's just say it couldn't be any less frightening had the filmmakers elected to pit Pekingese against Poodle. *1/2