“As any video clerk can attest, movies with the same or similar titles can wreak havoc,” writes Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey. “After a preview of Repo Men (Universal, 3.19), the Jude Law sci-fi thriller about organ hijackers, a perplexed filmgoer friend asked, ‘Was I wrong to think this was a remake of that Emilio Estevez comedy?’

“What a difference a vowel makes!

“Miguel Sapochnik‘s Repo Men (2010) is hard-core gore sci-fi starring Law and Forest Whitaker, and based on the sci-fi novel by Eric Garcia. Repo Man (1984) is a punk sci-fi comedy starring Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, written and directed by Alex Cox.

“I love Cox’s movie, one of the great all-time cult films, and its droll perspective on the way the future looked in 1984. Set in a Los Angeles where all products are generic, all authority is suspect and aliens may be hiding in the trunk of your car, Repo Man is about Otto (Estevez) and his career repossessing stolen automobiles. (Otto: Auto.)

“I still crack up at the movie’s visual jokes about the sinister implications of tree-shaped air fresheners. I still crack up at its anarchic characters given to dialogue like, ‘Let’s go get sushi and not pay!’ And I love the film’s epiphany, delivered by the deadpan Tracey Walter: “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.” And who doesn’t love the film’s transcendent climax, with a 1964 Chevy Malibu ascending to the heavens?

“I remember seeing the movie with my colleague Vince Canby who asked, with a delighted grin, “Did you ever expect to see a fusion of Close Encounters and Used Cars?”