Emilio Estevez’s hollow-eyed teenage punk is the lead character here, but the real stars of this great weirdo comedy are a) some of the seediest parts of Los Angeles and b) Harry Dean Stanton as the grizzled old repo veteran. Stanton is to this film what Samuel L. Jackson is to Pulp Fiction and Cary Grant is to His Girl Friday. He’s the heart of the movie, the smartest guy in it, and the one with all the best lines. First time writer/director Alex Cox yanked much of Stanton’s luminously quotable dialogue direct from a real life repo man whom he shadowed while doing research for his screenplay.
You won’t care much about the plot, but it’s about how everyone’s looking for a ’64 Chevy Malibu with a trunk full of dead space aliens that a Los Alamos nuclear physicist who’s gone insane is driving all over LA while mumbling to himself. The government wants it, an underground sect looking to blow the lid off the government’s knowledge of UFOs wants it, and the repo men want it because there’s a huge commission to be made.