Desperate times call for desperate measures. We’ve all had our fair share of 3 a.m. scallion pancakes at The Kong after a long night out and, at the time, they’re always AWESOME. The Kong can also provide a haven for late-night p-setters, who are “just as desperate for food but sober, so the hunger strikes harder.” But the Kong opens at 11:30… a.m. What on earth happens there during normal business hours? The Voice ventures to find out.

5:00 p.m.: Yikes. Where is everyone? Where are the drunken students trying to figure out tip? The kid asleep on the table? Sketchy guy spitting game over spicy noodles? This is not the Kong I know and love.

Occupants of the Kong: One small family and a professor-looking person chowing down on fried rice. Was seated quickly and brought water and a menu. This is… not so bad?

5:10 p.m.: Water: refilled. Ordered: Scallion Pancakes, Crab Rangoon, Sesame Chicken, and Hot Basil Noodles. I am scared and excited for greasy Chinese all at the same time.

5:29 p.m.: Food arrives quickly, it looks… good?! First bites= Delicious, delicious Chinese. Total win. But after awhile, you start to get the feeling that without the heavenly glow of alcohol surrounding your Hot Basil Noodles, Kong food really is just mediocre Chinese fare.  This is like finding out Santa isn’t real all over again. I want Santa back.

5:56 p.m.: Three girls come in and start recounting their weekend final club conquests. I’m starting to feel more comfortable. Nighttime Kong does exist in milder daylight form.

5:58 p.m.: Hilarity of girls next to us wears off, carb coma sets in. Need. To. Move.

5:59 p.m.: Movement impossible. Will wait for check and consider calling blockmates for assistance.

6:03 p.m.: Check arrives along with fortune cookies. We tubble outside. Mission Kong: Complete.

OVERALL REVIEW: It’s not the worst thing you could eat in the square. If you’re in the mood for some reasonably delicious Chinese during normal hours, the Kong is not a bad option at all. The service is quick and thorough (our water was refilled five times) and the food is generally tasty and inexpensive. However, Kong food is really best enjoyed after 1 a.m. with your best friends and that random guy you met in the quad. Really can’t beat it.

Our Fortunes:

Ability is not something to be shown off.

Attention is the mother of memory.

Inch by inch life’s a cinch. Yard by yard life is hard.

…… in bed.

Highlights from Kong’s Chick Power Playlist:

1)    Nelly Furtado: I’m Like a Bird

2)    Norah Jones: Sunrise

3)    Jewel: Breathe

4)    Brittany Spears: Toxic

5)    Beyonce: Irreplaceable

Photographic Evidence:

That’s probably telling you more than you ever wanted to know about my obsession with everything Jude. Well, the younger Jude, at least.

(Image courtesy of Google Images)

But I digress. Based on the 2009 HarperCollins novel The Repossession Mambo by Cornell grad Eric Garcia, Repo Men, which came out in early March this year, is an extremely gory sci-fi action flick that traces the adventure of Remy (Jude Law). Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, it boasts an enviable all-star lineup with names like Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber. The film takes us to the year 2025 when illnesses abound and organ transplantation is in demand. A highly streamlined, highly efficient company, The Union, steps up to the plate and offers perfectly functional prostheses for every body part imaginable. The only problem is that these body parts, termed “artiforgs,” are priced at well over $600,000. They are hence paid for in installments, and should a client fall too far behind in his payment, these Repo Men – “repossession mambos” – step in and retract the organs by literally slicing open the poor bastard and taking the “rented” organ out, still dripping with fresh blood. Well, as fresh as blood can possibly get in films anyway.

Jude Law as Remy the professional butcher is, first of all, very toned and buff. And there is no shortage of money shots to show off his bulging biceps and muscular torso, clearly one of the main draws of the film. I feel obliged to give the producers brownie points for savviness. He starts off as a serial killer who treats the extermination of other human beings as nothing more than a job. He’s efficient, he’s ruthless, and he’s good.

However, pressured by his wife’s apparent disgust of his job and her ultimatum to “make a decision,” Remy decided to transfer from the Thug department to the Sales one. Seems like a logical transition. Obviously, in the typical Hollywood tradition, things do not proceed as planned. In his last assignment, while trying to reclaim the heart of a musician named T-Bone, he is knocked unconscious and wakes up to find himself the owner of an artificial heart. He is angry, tries to reject it, and fails miserably. From this point onward, his heart is a ticking bomb that threatens to explode any second.

Not too surprisingly, when Remy gets a heart transplant, he also undergoes a change of heart. Lo and behold, he actually becomes more humane. “I can only think about how that schmuck [that I am about to kill] got a family, a wife and kids.” “Something changed,” he says. As the story goes, his grim wife leaves him, and Remy launches into a race to evade the very team of Repo Men he once was a part of. Obviously, Remy doesn’t fly solo, because he’s Jude Law and also because this is Hollywood. His partner in crime is Beth (Alice Braga), who possesses a body of artiforgs. They run together, fight alongside each other, and share the same bed. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, really. Except for the fact that practically everything on her body is fake. South Korean plastic surgeons should take note.

I was the only girl in the theater. The other 4 attendees were much older males, and for good reasons. It is certainly no Valentine’s Day movie. 2 minutes after the opening credits, you see Jude law physically slicing open a man’s stomach and taking out his liver. It is, in a nutshell, a testosterone-heavy and high-speed blood fest. There’s the perfunctory knifing of multiple bodily organs and then there’s also a typewriter crushing a guy’s head into five million pieces. Sometimes the gory details seem a tad redundant and make you cringe in your seat. It’s not how many people that die, it’s how they die. At times I feel as if I just fall into a hot tub time machine and wake up in the 1990s. You know, when fake blood and studio-produced “murders” were still so amusing to moviegoers that they needed to be shown every five minutes.

The premise is new and somewhat intriguing, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Many IMDB users who reviewed the movie (it has a meagre 6.3/10 average rating from over 2,000 votes) point out that Repo Men is a classic example of a film that has tremendous potential in its concept but is ultimately crippled by an identity crisis. Comic-thriller flair, check.  Sci-fi, check. Quasi-medical influence, check. Dystopic satire a la 1984, check. Weird, indecipherable ending a la Dallas, check. Bionic Woman, check. Philosophical parable, check. Violence and gore, triple check. So what is it, exactly? The answer is I’m not entirely sure. It’s like an attempt at taking the best of all worlds that ends up being a messy collage of everything mediocre and clichéd in filmmaking. I squirm in my seat and chuckle as Remy retreats to an abandoned room with his Bond girl and writes – hold your breath! – a memoir. It is a laugh-out-loud moment, but I doubt it is intended to be.

That said, Repo Men certainly has some comedic moments. I particularly enjoy the part where Remy and his bionic girlfriend walk into an underground Chinese medicine place so that she can get her fake leg fixed. The whole scene is just a nice and much needed distraction from all that killing and blood spilling. The skilled “surgeon” is a 9-year-old super skinny Chinese girl who has apparently done this “since she was 4.” Med school schmed school! The moral of this entirely redundant but nonetheless very entertaining segment is that the Chinese really are taking over the world. The underground clinic is demolished in the end and everyone killed, so Patrick Brennan and his brethren need not be alarmed yet.

Interestingly enough, in the aftermath of the healthcare brouhaha, the film  has gained much more attention and favorable reviews for its value as a cautionary tale against skyrocketing medical costs and hyper-powerful health insurance conglomerates that will literally come to keep everyone on life support. have gained more attention and favorable reviews. In the spirit of this review, however, I will refrain from delving into a political argument and leave you to decide for yourself.

Ultimately, despite giving its protagonists all sorts of prostheses, the film ends up lacking one crucial organ, the brain. It needs major editing and remixing. And more of a shirtless Jude Law, obviously.

The bottom line is, Repo Men is a perfect time-killer for Jude Law enthusiasts (such as yours truly) and bored middle-aged men who crave a literally bloody flick. The rest of you should just stick to watching reruns of Nip/Tuck.

Lawrence Talbot (DEL TORO), is forced to return to his family home following the disappearance of his brother where he is reunited with his estranged father (HOPKINS). Instead of merely discovering the whereabouts of his brother, Talbot becomes aware of a serious affliction that has been facing his old village–namely, that a blood-thirsty beast has been targeting the citizenry and turning the bitten into werewolves upon a full moon. A Scottish Yard inspector has even come to the village to investigate (WEAVING). In order to end the terror and save the woman Talbot has fallen for (BLUNT), he decides he must be the one to kill the beast–but he ends up being bitten himself–revealing a side of his mind and nature he did not believe to exist. Ultimately, this film is a strong action flick that is bolstered by an extremely strong and well reputed cast. It is not one to disappoint: great costumes, pulse-racing action and music, and well-written dialogue.

The premise of the story is one we are not unfamiliar with. Recent films like District 9 depicted similar metamorphoses from the human to the non-human. Some may find the storyline to be a tired one, but the ability of the film to be both a period piece and a thriller allows it to evade the science-fiction-esque quality given to many of 2009′s films that appealed to this notion of Otherness. There is something much more haunting about an irrepressible change in self–and that is what makes this film so appealing to all audiences since it is so bundled up in the collective human fear of irreparable change in body, self, and control.

Given the number of people who spend their full moon nights at Lamont, it is only appropriate that you should be the first to go see this movie–since it’s basically about you. You know you can’t deny it. We see you running around the yard with your fur and your claws. Stop eating so much ramen werewolves. Just stop it.

In honor of the film’s upcoming release, The Voice has joined up with Wolfman and is doing a giveaway of some sweet wolf items. So hot right now. Send your best werewolf pictures of your nights at Lamont to voice.lamonsterwolfman@gmail.com and maybe you can get a poster that looks like you will at 4 a.m. tonight working on your PSET. Make sure to caption your photograph or we won’t think you’re funny.

THE WOLFMAN opens nationwide February 12th