Plot

Set in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, it revolves around a man who struggles to make the payments on a heart he has purchased. He must therefore go on the run before said ticker is repossessed.

In the near future, the company "The Union" provides expensive prosthesis to improve the lives of the clients. However, the company sends repo men to retrieve the artificial organs for those that do not pay the installments. The former soldiers Remy and his best friend Jake are among the best repo men of the company; however Remy's job cost his marriage and his wife Carol leaves him. When Remy is ready to request to be transferred to the sales department expecting to save his marriage, he has an accident with a defibrillator and he needs heart transplantation. The prosthesis is very expensive and Remy changes his behavior after the medical procedure, and he is no longer capable of chasing the debtors. Meanwhile Remy helps the singer Beth, who owes a large amount to The Union, and sooner they are chased by the repo men.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The film opens in a very grungy, broken, obviously destitute ghetto area where we see a half-naked man laboriously two-finger pecking at an old typewriter. We hear Remy in the third person musing on the fate of Schrodinger's cat.

In 2025, a corporation called "The Union" has perfected the creation of bio-mechanical organs, which are available to those with money or "good credit." If a customer falls three months behind on payments, a "Repo man" is sent to reclaim the artificial organ (ArtifOrgs). The process of repossession almost always results in the death of the customer. Remy (Jude Law) and his partner Jake Freivald (Forest Whitaker) are considered the best of the Union's Repo men. This causes personal issues between Remy and his wife, Carol (Carice van Houten), forcing Remy to consider a transfer to sales.

After taking out a "Nest" a hideout of those who have fallen behind on credit, Remy and Jake are asked by their boss Frank Mercer (Liev Schreiber) to become full-time raid captains, those who lead daily Nest raids. Remy refuses and is about to ask Frank about a job in sales, but he is interrupted by Jake. Later while driving, Jake tries to convince Remy that their job is important regardless of the moral issues.

Still attempting to save his marriage with a transfer to sales, Jake tells Remy that his last job should be a cardiac repossession from a musician named T-Bone of whom Remy is a big fan. The Repo requires the use of a defibrillator. The device malfunctions: and Remy is violently shocked and severely injured. The damage requires the replacement of his own heart with an Artiforg heart.

Carol divorces Remy; so he moves in temporarily with Jake. Although he tries his hand at sales, he is unable to lie to potential customers about the consequences of non-payment and loses most of his commissions. Remy is forced back into Repo to pay for his heart. But due to his own artificial organ, he develops sympathy with his victims leaving him unable to perform his job and earn any money. When Jake discovers that Remy has not been repossessing, he takes him to another nest to find enough Artiforgs to clear his debt and get over his inability to repossess. However, Remy still cannot find it to do his job. Jake stuns two insolvents and insists that Remy stay and finish the repossessions until he gets over his "Hump." During Remy's deliberations with his conscience, a debtor revives and beats him unconscious.

Upon awakening, Remy encounters Beth (Alice Braga), who is past due on multiple organ transplants. After a failed attempt (because Remy was intercepted by Jake trying to remove the identification marks from already repossessed organs & then re-entering them in the system as belonging to Beth & himself) to clear both their individual accounts back at the Union's local headquarters, Remy torches his car and anything else traceable before the two leave to live in the outskirts. Beth gifts him with an old manual, ribbon typewriter; and Remy decides to document his life as a Repo man. The typing process is a flashback to the opening scene of the film. As he works, he is interrupted by the arrival of another Repo man, identified earlier in the film as a rather pathetic "level 3" collector, intending to repossess his heart. Remy sets a trap and drops him three stories through a hole in the floor and ultimately drops the typewriter on his head. Beth's prosthetic knee is badly damaged when she accidentally follows the Repo man down the same hole.

Using the Repo man's vehicle, Remy sneaks back into his former workplace to obtain a pair of jamming devices that fool organ scanners used by Repo men. He attempts to force Frank to clear his account only to discover that due to his prior attempt, all accounts can only be cleared back at the Union's central office. Remy and Beth attempt to flee the country at the airport but are taken by security when the bleeding from Beth's knee leaves a significant pool on the floor. A major fight with airport security ensues. Jake has been put on their trail after the failure of the earlier Repo attempt. He finds them at the airport; but is on the wrong side of a security panel and can only watch their escape. The pair head to a black-market doctor, where Beth's knee is replaced.

After the procedure, the two are stopped by Jake, who has tracked the pair. A bitter fight ensues, during which it is revealed that it was Jake who rigged the defibrillator unit to fail, causing Remy's heart replacement - he did this to ensure that Remy keeps his organ repossession job, so they could get promoted. The two fight, but Jake wins the fight fairly decisively. During a pause for manic laughter, Remy simultaneously stabs Jake above the knee, while Jake knocks Remy unconscious with a heavy steel hook, and Beth shoots Jake with his stun pistol.

After a sequence of phantasmagorical flashbacks, Beth awakens Remy and they become aware that an organ repossession raid is underway. They flee with the other residents of the ghetto and accidentally stumble upon a scan-blocked refuge with a small fraction of the other residents. After an indeterminate period of rest and sleep, Remy leaves the refuge to find dozens of the other occupants slain and eviscerated by the Union's Repo men. He resolves to destroy the corporation and delete all accounts of all Union-implanted individuals: "We wipe the system. No more accounts. No one's overdue." Remy passes his manuscript to his son during a brief meeting on a train.

The pair then travel to The Union's headquarters, hoping to fulfill their pledge to wipe the system. Remy and Beth are pursued throughout the building, and after an intense battle, arrive at the Pink Door, the main database for the Union. Using Beth's prosthetic eye, they are able to seal themselves inside just as Jake and Frank arrive. Once inside, they discover that the server does not have any interface other than an organ scanner. Remy realizes that the only modifications they can make to the system are with what they brought in themselves. Remy and Beth take turns cutting themselves open in order to use the scanner internally, clearing their own accounts. Jake and Frank are able to enter through the use of an organ scavenged from a victim of Remy's earlier fight and catch Remy trying desperately to scan Beth's last overdue organ.

Remy tells them that he is losing her. Jake asks Remy if she is worth it, to which he responds: "She's worth every job that we ever did." Frank pulls a gun to kill Remy, but Jake turns on his employer, killing him with a knife. Jake then assists Remy in reviving Beth; after which, he deposits two explosives inside the organ retrieval unit in lieu of the many organs previously scanned. The explosion destroys the Union's mainframe, wiping everyone who has an account with the corporation out of the system.

Later, Remy is on a tropical beach, enjoying his freedom with Beth and Jake. His text from earlier in the film has been published into a book, The Repossession Mambo. Remy turns to look at Jake but sees instead the background flickering and incoherent voices. It is discovered that Remy, in fact, sustained severe brain damage when Jake hit him with the heavy hook earlier in the film.

Jake, out of remorse, has paid off Remy's account and has had him placed in a neural network, allowing him to live the rest of his life in a dream. Beth is still alive but unconscious, and when questioned as to what to do with her, Jake says he will take care of her. This renders the ending sequence of the film as simply a fantasy of Remy's. Jake finds Remy's manuscript, which he greets with a sad, stifled sigh, as his former partner is wheeled away, presumably to spend the rest of his life in his fantasy world. The film ends with Frank delivering his sales pitch.