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All this might sound like open chaos, and for a while it looks that way on screen as well. But there’s more happening than you think there is with Repo Man; underneath its anarchist fist-pumping flair, the movie espouses a kind of hippy dippy existentialist vibe that it calls a "lattice of coincidence". It is scripted bedlam conducted with impeccable timing, as these bizarre characters and events circle each other, weaving in and out of one another’s paths with the clockwork precision of an air show. Their movements are choreographed to the same snarling jackhammer beat so that at the movie’s madcap climax, everyone’s role seems to have been predestined. Think of it as a stripped down Cannonball Run with no stars, no budget, and no finish line, but definitely with more guns and aliens. Despite its shoestring budget, manic pandemonium and confusing plot this is at the very least, a story whose inertia is generally well used. An occasionally indecipherable adventure manages to avoid wearing out its welcome thanks to a surprisingly dry sense of humor, some deceptively witty dialogue and a heaping helping of snickering social satire. Yet much of the time, the film is having itself a lot more fun than you are – a funny movie with no real sense of direction still feels a little bit like wasted time. At the end of the day you are trying to tell a story and when the credits roll on this one, you’ll find yourself smirking but you’ll also spend about half an hour wondering what the hell just happened. Perhaps Estevez himself put it best when he declared the movie a "triumph of style over substance."

If nothing else, Repo Man reminds us that once upon a time the most famous member of the Sheen family was still named Estevez.

For better or worse, Repo Man is less a "lattice of coincidence" than it is a loosely connected patchwork of ideas on the nature of being. Alex Cox clearly had a lot of thoughts floating around his head about life, death, chance and experience. He was himself a repo man at one point, and a good friend of mine is as well – I can tell you that in that line of work, you do gain a lot of insight into what makes people tick if you choose to observe it. But whether or not legally stealing cars for a living can really give you an accurate read on the human experience in general is another matter. Repo Man attempts to juggle a lot of existential concepts at once but that’s a lot to ask of a film that despises the very world it sets out to examine, and whose soundtrack leads off with Iggy Pop and Black Flag. All of this might sound like a big turn off to most people, but Repo Man isn’t addressed to most people. If anything, it is a love letter to the post punk generation. For one brief shining moment in the 1980s, there was a strata of youth who were as tired of Van Halen as they were of the Ramones, as tired of consumerism as they were of nihilism. But being sick of everything generally makes you an advocate of nothing; and ironically nobody needs leadership more than the universal skeptic. Repo Man provides some by occupying a transitional space in the realm of agitant cinema just prior to the birth of alternative music and the modern independent film movement. It is a live action antidote to even more obscure fare such as Fritz the Cat and Heavy Metal, and it stands as precursor and inspiration to filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. In fact, Repo Man itself is probably less important than the environment it helped create; sometimes being a pioneer means the results your work will be remembered more fondly than the work itself.

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