VISUAL ARTS

The tale of a young man learning the tricks of the trade of repossessing cars from an old hand serves primarily as the MacGuffin for a manically satirical look at life in the US during the first Reagan administration. With a doomsday device in the trunk of a car giving off a menacing glow (lovingly lifted from Kiss Me Deadly), Cox lightheartedly makes some serious points about the all-pervasive menace of the military-industrial complex, and gives the staggeringly great cast of character actors brilliant material to resourcefully ply. Set in the wasteland that then was downtown Los Angeles in the age of punk, Repo Man is in many ways an outsider’s view – that of an Englishman suddenly landed in the urban sprawl of a most un-European city.