Nemesis

MOVIE #1,992 • SCORE 10/10 • 09.26.24
SERIES: ALBERT & AKERMAN


“Goddam cop… Goddam terrorist.” …and the thin line between them. The more things change, the more they stay the same (in the past, the present and some imagined futures). I’m not sure if Pyun has a better movie among the three dozen we still have to get to, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Nemesis takes the cake in the end. There are stretches that go on for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes here that are RELENTLESS. In Dollman, we saw Pyun lean into intense shoot ‘em up gun violence like never before, and he completely takes it to another level here. As a visceral/visual experience, this is an A+ film. The story on the other hand…

The plot is somehow both an overly convoluted mess AND filled with an almost childlike whimsy, ambitious AND extremely silly — these modes are interconnected and constantly informing one another: layers and characters are stacked up because that's where the wandering imagination leads to. I keep coming back to the fact that Pyun constantly used screenwriter pseudonyms on his projects. Perhaps it has something to do with the simple fact that many of these productions were difficult to get off the ground, constantly getting shelved and reworked, or maybe it’s some (even simpler) labor guild technicality that I’m not familiar with. Either way, it seems symbolic to me in that it creates a purposeful disconnect between the story and the aesthetics. I can have fun with a narrative like this, trying to parse it as the larger part of my brain attempts to just shut down and enjoy the show: it feels like a challenge. In the end, the action speaks for itself and it’s not much of a contest…







I counted probably six or seven actors making at least their second appearance in a Pyun film here, and that’s as telling as anything. People clearly liked working with him. Whether it’s old standby Thom Mathews or Dollman’s villain Jackie Earle Hayley showing up for a single scene, I imagine these were extremely fun sets to be around. And that shows.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,991 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,993 ⫸

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Nemesis is a 1992 American cyberpunk action film directed by Albert Pyun and starring Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Yuji Okumoto, Marjorie Monaghan, Brion James and Deborah Shelton. Set in a near future world populated by androids, the film centers on Alex Rain (Gruner), a cybernetically-enhanced, ex-counterterrorism operative charged by his former employers with assassinating his former lover, the leader of an underground militant group. This is the first installment in the Nemesis film series, and was followed by four direct sequels and a spinoff film. It was released on December 26, 1992.