'Nemesis' initially peaked my interest when I saw Nick Moran in the cast of a classic gangster movie. Whilst Billy Murray and Frank Harper's acting skills won't set the pulse racing, I figured I knew roughly what I'd be getting. I was wrong.
The first thing that immediately stuck out like a sore thumb was the strange dialogue, obsessed with everyone finishing each sentence with the other characters name. Remember the classic lines in Snatch:
"That sounds like hostility doesn't it John?"
"Oh we don't like hostility, do we Errol?"
"No we don't John".
It's like that the whole way through. Ok, I quickly knew who every character was but there's better methods of writing that can achieve that!
Acting was atrocious the whole way through, typified by the bizarre casting of Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, who literally can't move anything above her lips. Whilst not a criticism of her as a person or her appearance, a basic pre requisite of acting in this kind of role does require an actor to be able to express different emotions between enjoying a nice glass or red wine or having a gun in their mouth. Sadly, she can't.
There are some classic cliché scenes, some bizarre ones and downright ridiculous ones. Very early on we get the druken copper going to the draw, putting the gun in his mouth and not going through with it. Never seen that before....
Then we have Moran at a complete loss with his life, walks in a bar and then a long chat with a guy he used to know completely changes his life around. Really?
Then to top it off we have 2 people with guns arguing over who's going to shoot a guy, when said guy is standing right there pointing a gun back at them. What? If he had anything about him he'd have shot them both whilst they were bickering. This was just blind ridiculous.
The main storyline actually wasn't bad but there's so many other random things going on with sub plots, it's just like a brainstorm of ideas bundles together and ends up a complete mess. A big meeting together between 2 big gangsters, taking up the best part of 10 minutes in the movie, which ends up having absolutely no relevance to the story at all. A filler scene, of which there are many.
Whilst generally being a terrible movie, it's curiously watchable. I don't know if I can give it any credit or it's just my love of the genre.
How anyone can give this a high score I've no idea. Movies are subjective, sure. But this is one of those that makes you very suspicious of any 9's or 10's. 'Mediocre' is a big complement to this movie.
