Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez) is a frustrated punk rocker who has just quit his latest job at a grocery store after punching a colleague - later he finds himself dumped by his girlfriend aswell.
Whilst wandering the streets wondering what to do next , he is recruited in the repossession of a car by a repossession (repo) agent. After discovering his parents have donated his college fund to a evangelist, he joins the repossession agency as a trainee "repo man".
During this training, he is introduced into the mercenary and paranoid world of the drivers, befriended by a UFO conspiracy theorist, confronted by rival repo agents, discovers some of his one-time friends have turned to a life of crime, is lectured to about cosmic unconsciousness by the repo agency grounds worker, and finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue concerning a huge repossession bounty on a 1964 Chevy Malabu driven by a lunatic government scientist, with Top Secret cargo in the trunk.