Repo men

Why do Hollywood studios ever entrust a multi-million-dollar movie to a first-time director?

They want to save costs, and first-timers are cheap, maybe even below union rates? No, that would be short-sighted, per the halfpenny of tar adage. The wannabee has a strong track record of working on movie sets in junior capacities? Okay, it's admirable to workup from the ranks. He/she made an award-winning attention-grabbing film school short? Of such pretentious stuff are many careers made.

Newbie is part of the producer's package? Grin, studio, and bear it. And if the new kid on the set block brought you the movie's concept and he's part of his own package? Grin and cross your fingers, as Universal Pictures may have done with Repo Men and its director Miguel Sapochnik. Back in the second half of the 90s, in Scotland, Miguel was a credited storyboard artist on a handful of movies, including a couple with Danny Boyle. Miguel's surname was Rosenberg, then it got double-barrelled into Rosenberg-Sapochnik.

Between 1999 and Repo Men, released in 2010, Miguel has no credits in the IMDb.

In 2003 however, according to Wikipedia, Miguel was working on a screenplay with a pair of writers developing the idea of medical parts repossession. One of them, Eric Garcia, already had created the screenplay for a critically-respected movie, Matchstick Men. Maybe Miguel was a pre-production fixture, even before the less than super-stellar Jude Law and Forest Whitaker were cast in the title roles by the studio (DiCaprio being one reported signee who dropped out).

The long intro indicates that there isn't much positive news or views to share about yet another Universal movie that flopped. It only pulled in US$13 million despite various gratuitous scenes of deep knife wounds and vibrant blood clearly designed to appeal to morbid multiplex teenagers and pervs. The repo men (Law and Whitaker) are white (UK) and black (US) schoolmates who, in a SFX future a la Besson and Gilliam, become a pair of crack repossessors of organs sold to needy patients by The Union. Its wicked grinning boss is, not too surprisingly for casting directors, Liev Schreiber. Repossession, as spelt out clearly in The Union's contracts, leads to clients' deaths and a pair of gleeful blood-stained heroes.

Whitaker doesn't have much to do until the fantasy's far-fetched end. Law has a disapproving wife who wants him to move into sales, and he meets a singer (Alice Braga, a multi-award-winning actress in her home market of Brazil). Law is also a budding author and wannabee musician, creating his Repossession Mambo (the title of the book of the film that Garcia published before the film was released, which all concerned maybe thought was a good marketing ploy). Miguel was one of the movie's "executive producers"; IMDb records that he is not working on any new or other projects. Maybe, as the gap between 1999 and 2010 suggested, he doesn't need to work for a living.