The circumstances that gave rise to the aesthetics of this movie are long gone. Punk attitudes rose and fell in the 80s, and in the forty years since this came out, new attitudes of entitlement, resentment and envy have replaced the punk ethos. The contempt for normative lifestyles continues but it is much less interesting now than it was in 1984. If we set aside the angry young man motif of the film, there still remains an off beat story about losers, struggling to make it in the world, and the complications that arise when they cross paths with society. In other words, this is still a punk movie, it just has lost it's cause.
No characters in the movie are particularly likeable. Otto, the main protagonist played by Emilio Estevez, is an angry, self centered punk, with no respect for women, who feels entitled to something more, but he doesn't quite know what. He does seem to have some ethics, but those morals are constantly undermined by his associates, both the professionals he takes up with, and the girl he supposedly cares about. It may be understandable why he has such attitudes, everyone he interacts with lets him down in some way. Bud, the Harry Dean Stanton character, is his mentor, but also an antagonist who second guesses and manipulates Otto from the start. Thankfully, their story does get a more satisfactory conclusion than that of Leila, the girl who betrays him after he has rescued her a couple of times.
The great Tracey Walter, plays Miller , a non-driving cog in the repo man world, who passes out wisdom like candy at Halloween. The only problem is, when you look in your bag, it is full of those circus peanut candies that are disgusting. Nothing Miller says means much, and most of the time it is simply designed to provoke those around him. His commentary on John Wayne is a good example of that. Lite, is another repo man that Otto works with and his philosophy is at complete odds with the one Bud has been espousing. There is not a homogenous set of opinions in this culture. The Rodriguez brothers, who are set up as antagonists early in the film, turn out to be not so bad in the end. The UFO group that seeks the McGuffin, are not heroic revolutionaries but jaded outsiders who are indifferent to their own benefactor .
There is a ton of stuff to laugh about in the film. The banality of normal life is lampooned by the use of the "generic" products of the era. Otto's parents are hypnotized by the television and a preacher that they are sending all their money too. The customers who are losing their cars are often nitwits or trying to pull a fast one themselves. The former friends of Otto, who have become stick up artists, are the most inept of all, suggesting that writer/director Alex Cox is is not all that sympathetic to the youth in the picture at all. My favorite moment in the film is an exchange between two of Alex former friends,
Debbi: Duke, let's go do some crimes.
Duke: Yeah. Let's go get sushi and not pay.
I wrote about this movie originally on my 30 Years On Project, saluting the films I saw in 1984. This Screening at the Paramount was the first time I have seen the movie in a theater since 1984. It really holds up well. Just as a side note, the Chevy Impala that Bud drives in the movie, had a parking decal on the bumper from Fullerton College, which was a duplicate of the one I had on my car because I was teaching there in 1984.
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