Repo Men - The Transhumanist Future Revealed

"For a price, any organ in your body can be replaced. But it can also be repossessed."

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS FILM YET.

In 2025, a corporation called The Union has perfected the design and manufacture of biomechanical, artificial organs (ARTIFORGS), which have completely replaced real human organ transplants.

A potential customer can apply to The Union for an artificial organ, which are sold on credit, at high interest rates. If a customer is unable to keep up with the high payments, after three months, a "repo man" is sent after them to repossess the Union's property - from within the deadbeat customer's body, literally.

The repossession process is brutal and bloody, often resulting in the death of the customer, being that the objective of the repo man's surgical procedure is to quickly and efficiently cut the artiforg device out of the body, with no particular regard for the survival of the human being involved.

The main character, Remy, (Jude Law) is one of The Union's top repo men, who partners with his childhood friend, Jake, (Forest Whitaker) to collect on past due accounts. Remy is highly regarded within The Union as their top performer, although his occupation causes serious problems with his wife, who sees it as hideous.

She soon leaves Remy, after Jake commits a repossession in front of their home - brutally cutting the Union's "property" out of a living human's body in the backseat of a taxi - spilling a pool of blood into the street of their quiet, suburban neighborhood. This prompts Remy to request a transfer to a sales job at The Union, much to Jake's chagrin.

As his final repossession job, Remy is sent to the residence of a music producer, whose work he happens to admire. After allowing the man enough time to complete a song, Remy prepares to repossess his...well, The Union's artificial heart.

When Remy attempts to use a heart defibrillator to stop the unit, the machine malfunctions, electrocuting Remy and knocking him across the room...and into a coma.

When Remy awakens from his coma, he is informed by his friend Jake and The Union CEO, Frank, (Liv Schrieber) that the massive electrical shock has severely damaged his heart beyond repair.

He is confronted with his only options: he can be fitted with an artificial heart  - The Union's property, of course - or he can die.

Remy then attempts to flee the hospital on foot, but fails, obviously. He reluctantly agrees to the heart translant procedure which will keep him alive, and in debt to The Union for the rest of his life.

Oh, the irony.

After recovering for awhile, Remy goes back to work, but is unable to perform his repo man job because he has now realized that he is just like the people he is expected to repossess the artificial organs from. He attempts to transition into sales, but quickly finds himself falling behind in the payments to The Union for his brand new artificial heart. 

You see, the job in sales doesn't pay nearly as well as cutting the artiforgs out of the bodies of those unfortunate customers who can't keep up with their payments...like him.

Jake takes Remy to the outskirts of the city to a "nest", which is a collection of people who have gone into hiding to avoid having their artificial, internal organs repossessed, because they have past due accounts with The Union.

Remy is again unable to perform a repossession, after which he is abandoned by Jake until he can perform his job. Remy is then attacked by a pair of men that he was expected to repossess artificial organs from, and he gets knocked unconscious during the attack.

When he awakens, Remy encounters Beth, whom he had met earlier in a bar, where she was singing quite beautifully, "Cry Me a River".

He discovers that she has multiple artificial organs which are past due, and she is currently suffering from severe drug addiction. Remy takes her to a motel room, where he stays with her as she goes through drug withdrawal.

After Jake interrupts Remy's attempt to falsify their artiforg returns back at the Union's headquarters, Remy leaves unassailed by Jake, returns to Beth, and the two leave to live in the outskirts.

The pair live, for a time, in relative harmony. Remy uses an old typewriter that Beth had found to type up a narrative of his life, and his subsequent conversion. Just as he finishes typing, a repo man arrives to repossess his heart, but as he approaches Remy, he falls through a hole in the floor that Remy had covered with a rug as a trap, which sends the repo man crashing to the floor below, knocked unconscious.

Then Beth, who was hiding behind the door, also falls when the floor collapses underneath her, reinjuring her leg. From above, Remy sees the repo man coming, preparing to shoot Beth with his tazer weapon.

Remy drops the heavy typewriter onto him through the floor, crushing his head, to save Beth and himself.

Using the repo man's vehicle, Remy sneaks back into his former workplace to obtain a pair of devices that will fool the organ scanners used by repo men. He attempts to force Frank (The Union's CEO) to clear his account, only to discover that due to his previous aborted attempt, all accounts can now only be cleared back at The Union's central office.

Remy and Beth attempt to flee the country at the airport, but are taken away by security when it is discovered that Beth's prosthetic knee was damaged due to their earlier encounter with the repo man. Once inside, they are forced to fight against airport security and yet another pair of repo men.

Remy and Beth are able to kill or incapacitate all of them, and while escaping, they come face to face - through impenetrable safety glass - with Jake, who has now been assigned the account to repossess Remy's artificial heart.

The pair head to a black market surgeon, where Beth's knee is replaced. After the procedure, the two are stopped by Jake, who has tracked them down.

A bitter fight ensues, during which Jake reveals that it was he who rigged the defibrillator unit to malfunction at Remy's fateful and final artiforg repossession, which caused the electroshock incident that made Remy's heart replacement necessary in the first place. Jake planned this to ensure that Remy would have to keep his repo man job, so that they could both get promoted together.

The two engage in a furious fight, but Jake gains the upper hand and knocks Remy unconscious by hitting him in the head with a heavy steel chain and hook.

Remy is awakened by Beth, and as they escape a raid by The Union's repo men, they are pulled into a safe house by an underground network of artiforg refugees. The two survive the night, but Remy is overcome with remorse after finding the corpses of the victims of The Union raid.

He resolves to destroy the corporation and clear the accounts of Beth and himself. After passing his story to his son during a brief meeting on a train, the pair travel to The Union's headquarters, hoping to remove themselves from the system.

Remy and Beth are pursued throughout the building, and after an intense battle against Remy's former coworkers, they arrive at the Pink Door, the main database for the Union.

After scanning Beth's prosthetic eye, they are able to seal themselves inside the data center, just as Jake and Frank arrive. Once inside, they discover that the server does not have any interface except for a scanner. Remy realizes that the only way to remove themselves from the system is to repo their artiforgs. Remy and Beth cut themselves open in order to use the scanner internally, to clear their accounts.

Jake and Frank are able to gain entry to the data center through the use of an artificial organ, and see Remy trying desperately to resuscitate Beth, who has stopped breathing during the process. Jake asks Remy if she was worth all the hardship and pain that he has put himself through, which he confirms - yes, she was.

Frank pulls a gun to kill Remy, but Jake then turns on his employer, stabbing him with a knife. Jake then assists Remy in reviving Beth, after which he deposits two explosives inside the organ return unit, which is like those air tubes in the drive-thru lane at the bank. The explosion destroys The Union's mainframe, wiping all the client account records out of the system.

The scene now shifts to Remy, who is shown on a tropical beach, enjoying his freedom with Beth and Jake. His text from earlier in the film has been published into a book, 'The Repossession Mambo" - a joke mentioned earlier in the film, which refers to the seizure-like movements of repo victims after they've been cut open and lay there struggling as they die.

Remy turns to look at Jake, but now the background glitches, flickers and incoherent voices are heard. We are now shown Remy lying on a stretcher, with wide, vacant, comatose eyes, surrounded by paramedics and his nemesis, Jake.

You see, in reality, Remy sustained permanent, traumatic brain injuries when Jake hit him on the head with the metal hook and chain during their fight. This plot twist probably alludes to the way Remy narrates parts of the story earlier in the film, mentioning that he has been knocked out four times in his life. This last one being the fifth, but which he would never remember to tell about, with his brain all but destroyed.

Somehow, Jake, out of guilt and remorse (quite ironic for a sociopath) for having killed his friend (or his brain, anyway), has paid off Remy's debt to The Union and placed him on life support equipment, complete with an advanced M-5 Neural Network computer - allowing him to live the rest of his "life" in an artificial, virtual reality "dream".

Beth is still alive but unconscious, and when questioned by the paramedics about what to do with her, Jake replies that he will "take care of her". This pivotal scene shows us that the second half of the film was entirely an artificial construct of Remy's comatose, neural net, virtual existence.

Jake then finds Remy's manuscript, which he greets with a bitter chuckle, as his former partner is wheeled away by the paramedics, presumably to spend the rest of his days hooked up to life support machines, imprisoned in the artificial "consciousness" of the M-5 neural net machine.

The film ends with The Union's always ruthless CEO, Frank, delivering his usual sales pitch in a Union advert in the real world, showing us that nothing has changed at all - it's business as usual, and highly profitable, in this very dark and revealing vision of a future Transhumanist world.

Then our view shifts back to the false reality of Remy - who we now realize is comatose and not having any fun at all in true reality - where he is relaxing in the sunshine on the beach with his friends. Jake hands Remy a lovely tropical drink, saying, "A little fruit, for the fruit?" - a cruel double entendre, being that his former friend is now, for all practical purposes, a 'vegetable'.

Remy leans back, looks down at Beth walking beside the water, sips his tropical drink, smiles and laughs.

The End.







Final Thoughts

This film depicts fictional events that have not yet occurred, but which could conceivably happen, considering the direction we see our world moving in - quite rapidly, in fact. 

This scenario involves much more than just the technological advances necessary to create artificial organs, but the socio-political aspects of our world that are taking shape, even as I write this. 

Notably, the hostile takeover of the entire American healthcare system by a dictatorial few in government who camouflage their socialist designs of dominance and control over us in benevolent sheep's clothing of "affordable healthcare" for the masses.

For those who are believers (or self-deceivers) in the nightmare that is socialized healthcare, it is important to recognize, at the very least, that the rationing and long waiting lists for medical treatment, even in the most advanced and financially secure nations, stem from a system of government control that does not lend itself to making the most advanced forms of medical treatment available to everyone.

By its very nature, government has no other option than to restrict and limit both the quality and quantity of healthcare services provided, simply because it is impossible to give so many people "the very best" of anything - much less something as expensive as advanced medical care.   

The other key aspect of this is unrestrained corporate greed, which is obviously a major concern, although I would see this dark vision of the future being much more likely under the boot of government force - as is always the desire of evil tyrants masquerading as benevolent leaders of the people - than simply occurring out of purely corporate efforts.

Indeed, this probably tells us that the most likely way for a situation like this to occur, these dark, dystopian future scenes, is with the marriage (or more aptly, merger) of immoral corporate greed and unrestrained government power abuses. 

Only with the combination of the two beasts can this truly be achieved, being that any corporate entities that are not in sync (and in bed) with government objectives will be regulated and criminalized into submission with the goals that those governments wish to achieve, regardless of any existing laws.

Corporations, typically, must work within the framework and comply with existing laws, whereas governments, being notoriously corrupt and self-serving, will simply find ways to change the framework itself (the laws), thus making their illegal acts no longer illegal, and even wonderful and good for us, via mass media propaganda efforts. At least in their own sick minds.  

It is exactly this scenario that was written about by the truly visionary novelist Wiliam Gibson, in his book, Neuromancer, more than 25 years ago - before there even was an internet - one that any of us really knew about, anyway.

Yet, Gibson's pioneering work very accurately painted this portrait of a dystopian future, complete with an internet-addicted and dependent world, cowboy hacker data thieves vying for power against the corporate/government alliance of tyranny, and plenty of high-tech body part replacements and genetic engineering tricks to make even the most die-hard (pun very intended) Transhumanists drool.

The primary difference I see between what we are shown in Repo Men and how it would actually occur in reality, is that only the elite few will be eligible or able to receive these miraculous advances in life-extending technology - which is not a big stretch if you look at the here and now, and simply extrapolate that out a few decades.

The rich and powerful will control the flow and availability of technological advancements - medical and otherwise - and that, in and of itself, will leave the overwhelming majority of the rest of us on the outside looking in, able only to envy and dream of having the magnificent toys and medical advancements available to the wealthy, elite ruling class.

You can be sure that they won't be shedding any tears over how unfair it is for the rest of us.

As I wrote some time ago in a previous article ("Imma Bee the Future: Selling Transhumanism to the Masses Using Psychological Warfare"), it is very important to keep the following in mind when considering the subject of Transhumanism as a whole, or any part of it:

The essence of what it is to be human is being born, living your life - be it a few years or a hundred - and, inevitably, dying.

We will all die from the flesh. You, me...all of us. There is no getting around it, and allowing ourselves to entertain such delusions of artificially delaying the inevitable - and it IS inevitable - is not a good coping strategy. In fact, it's not really a strategy at all, but rather, simply an illusion, and delusional at its core.

Our lives will be so much better spent enjoying them as much as possible, and fulfilling our responsibilities to our Creator who gave us life and the freewill to enjoy it as we choose- those responsibilities include learning all of the things we need to learn in preparation for what comes next - outside the boundaries of this flesh we temporarily inhabit. Learning to be kind and loving, and willing to care about so much more than just ourselves, and self-serving desires.

What we truly are is not what we see in the mirror. We are not the sum total of our thoughts, or the electrical impluses sizzling through the synapses so brilliantly designed within the lumps of grey matter in our primitive skulls.

We are so much more than these physical things, and even more still than these selfish monsters we call egos that hide within us; wanting only what they want, seeking only their own pleasure at the expense and neglect of others, and avoiding anything which may cause them pain or discomfort.

What we truly are, in spirit, is at war with the ego, which could correctly be called "the devil inside" each one of us.

What we truly are inside is so much more beautiful, loving and caring than what we can comprehend just yet, because we are trapped within this flesh and stuck with this "roommate" that is the ego, which constantly works to convince us, often very successfully, that it IS us. But it is not us.




Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the awareness that one exists as an individual being. Without self-awareness, the self perceives and accepts the thoughts that are occurring to be who the self is.

Self-awareness gives one the option or choice to choose thoughts being thought rather than simply thinking the thoughts that are stimulated from the cumulative events leading up to the circumstances of the moment (i.e., "autopilot mode", or ego-driven "knee jerk" reactions).


Self-awareness is the beginning of breaking free from this "autopilot mode" of existence, where one can start to see that there are more important things in life than themselves, ideally developing to the point of understanding that, in the view of God, our Creator, everything and everyone is just as important and beautiful as one's own self.

It is simply the nature of humility, which is, of course, the opposite of vanity. 

Eternal life is not only possible, but available to everyone who chooses it, through God's sacrifice and gift to all of us.

But it will not be achieved in the flesh, with artificial organ transplants and the Luciferian doctrines of Transhumanism.































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