Amazon.com Essentials:
A volatile, toxic potion of satire and nihilism, road movie
and science fiction, violence and comedy, the unclassifiable
sensibility of Alex Cox's Repo Man is the model and inspiration
for a potent strain of post-punk American comedy that includes not
only Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), but also early Coen
brothers (Raising Arizona, in particular), Men in Black,
and even (in a weird way) The X-Files. Otto, a baby-face punk
played by Emilio Estevez, becomes an apprentice to Bud (Harry Dean
Stanton), a coke-snorting, veteran repo-man-of-honor prowling the
streets of a Los Angeles wasteland populated by hoods, wackos,
burnouts, conspiracy theorists, and aliens of every stripe. It may
seem chaotic at first glance, but there's a "latticework of
coincidence" (as Tracey Walter puts it) underlying everything. Repo
Man is a key American movie of the 1980s--just as Taxi
Driver, Nashville, and Chinatown are key American
movies of the '70s. With a scorching soundtrack that features Iggy
Pop, Fear, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Suicidal Tendencies. --Jim
Emerson
