Nemesis

This film should win a worst gangster film of all time award.

From the trite, over-done dialogue to the trout-pout, fake EVERYTHING bimbo, this is a total waste of time. I cannot believe the hype that surrounds this film!

Cheap awful rubbish.

Billy Murray & Frank Harper in awful gangster film. Nothing new there. Nick Moran is a surprise though, you'd expect from him.

It's a wonder that this drivel gets made.

Wooden script. Wooden acting. Wooden production.

If it was a secondary school drama production you'd say B for effort. But you'd never commission it as a serious film production!!

Don't bother watching this, 88 minutes of your life you just won't get back. So do yourself a favour and watch something else. Anything else. Really. Watch a Tesco ad on repeat. Watch paint dry. Watch Crossroads. Or even watch Billy Murray in The Bill when he actually had some credibility!!

'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.

Now gangster/gangland movies have never really been my thing but every so often I'll take the plunge and check one out.

My interest in this one stems from having known one of the producers on the project. Now before you raise an eyebrow and think I'm about to sing lyrically about the movie without giving my real thoughts, rest assured I've thought long and hard about this review.

Obviously filmed in the time of Corona, so with that in mind I tip my cap to all for pulling the production together in such circumstances.

As the movie begins we see a little girl running along a beach, as to why, it's a case of watch carefully and don't blink, it's all plot relevant.

What happens when a feared member of the gangster fraternity returns from exile, will things remain the same? Or will time have moved on, well as Billy Murray's John Morgan soon discovers, time waits for no man and in his absence enter the ever so suave Bruce Payne as Damien Osborne to lay down the rules of the game.

Of course Frank Morgan has other ideas and along with his wife, Sadie played by Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott and daughter Kate played by Roger Moore's granddaughter Ambra.

With a movie of this kind, how do you inject something fresh into the proceedings, as I mentioned previously it all begins at the beginning with the very brief prologue, who is this little girl and what part will she play during the ensuing proceedings.

Of course with Frank Morgan's arrival back on home soil, this ignites long fuelled passions of anger within the community plus it reinstates the passion for justice within Nick Moran world weary police officer Frank Conway, can he finally put his stamp of authority on the the returning Morgan and make the streets just that little bit safer? Or will his own demons take hold and derail his own sanity.

Whilst entertaining to a point, there are some issues, certain scenes go on way too long, the direction isn't exactly flashy given that the Director James Crow is more known in certain circles for his frequent foray's into the horror genre but this assignment was a last minute gig as he replaced the original director Adam Stephen Kelly, who wrote the script for this movie.

There is a very jaw dropping scene involving Miss Sothcott, which at first glance was perhaps not needed, but if you recall the movie world of Roger Corman and his insistence that if the plot is flagging throw in some mild nudity.

Granted afterwards, I did ponder and wonder if the scene between Miss Sothcott and Lucy Aarden's character of Zoe that followed afterward should have went in a different direction.

The storyline is a little strained in terms of trying to follow it but no doubt revisions played a part in certain elements of the coherency of the plot, I must say though the scenes between Nick Moran and Ricky Grover as Billy in the bar room scene were excellent, very understated with both actors bouncing off one another with some choice dialogue, in some respects Nick Moran's character pretty much stole the show.

Billed as a home invasion thriller, this aspect comes into play with the party scene, and the events that follow with double cross shenanigans revealing themselves between all parties plus we get a twist in the tail which as twists go did sting a little as the plot devices used to wind up the story didn't at any point suggest what had happened in the life of Frank Morgan previously.

The movie itself has been a huge hit regardless of what I or any one else's think, and having been on the set of this movie I understand the blood sweat and tears that went into making it, but perhaps if they hassle given themselves more time and filmed at a later date we might have gotten a more polished production but to be commended regardless.