Bankruptcy

Of Cyborgs and Repo Men

By Angie Littwin

The New York Times may have thought it had the scoop on the repo man of the future, but the new movie Repo Men has it beat by several hundred years. Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker star as space-age repossession agents who track down debtors and retake their collateral. The twist is that the collateral in question is transplanted body parts. So if, for example, you fall behind on the payments for your new kidney, Law and Whitaker will hunt you down and take it off your hands. Early in the preview ? the movie opens later this week ? we see the two scalpel-toting contract enforcers taking the Article 9 ?breach of the peace? standard to whole new levels and saying over beers that a job is just a job. But, not surprisingly, Law has change of heart, one that appears to be spurred by a literal change of heart, and suddenly . . . the repo man becomes the debtor. (That?s credit-speak for ?the hunter becomes the hunted.?)

Judging from the preview, Repo Men looks like your typical sci-fi dystopia flick where good-looking people fight a seemingly losing battle against a behemoth government or corporation that controls every aspect of human life. What?s interesting is that the credit industry has a starring role as the Big Brother. The movie takes two of the worst miseries of the current credit system ? overwhelming medical debt and rampant foreclosure ? and twists them into one debt nightmare. I never thought the line, "We could come up with a plan that fits your [budget]" could sound so menacing. Does a movie like this mean that there?s enough anger at lenders to, say, get us a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with teeth? I don?t know. But it does suggest that this is our big chance. We may never get an action-movie moment again.

Thank you to UT student Jennifer Carter for the tip!

Full post as published by Credit Slips on March 15, 2010 (boomark / email).