Nemesis – Lacks the Final Punch
Director: James Crow
Writer: Adam Stephen Kelly (Screenplay) Adam Stephen Kelly, Jonathan Sothcott (Story)
Starring: Julian Glover, Nick Moran, Bruce Payne, Billy Murray, Frank Harper, Lucy Aarden, Rupert Holliday-Evans
Plot: An underworld kingpin’s past catches up with him when he returns to London, igniting an explosive chain of events which ends in revenge and murder.
Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Nemesis starts when John Morgan (Murray) returns to London with his wife Sadie (Sothcott) with the simple plan to meet his daughter’s Kate (Moore) new partner. His arrival has seen detective Frank Conway (Moran) come after him, looking to lock him up for good, while rival crime boss Damien Osborne (Payne) gives him a strict warning.
When the past does start to catch up with Frank, he will end up caught up in the middle of revenge and murder, a path he can’t escape from without leaving a few more bodies left around him.
Thoughts on Nemesis
Characters & Performances – John Morgan is the crime boss that has returned to London, his actions have caused many people problems and now his meeting of his daughter’s new girlfriend, will see him facing his past. Billy Murray will always get the crime boss character done well, here is no different. Frank Conway is the cop that saw his childhood ruined by John, he has been waiting for him to return to get his own revenge on him, never wanting to cross the line of the law. Nick Moran strong as the brooding character. When it comes to the other characters, we get the family of John who has lived the life of luxury because of his actions and other people who have been waiting for him to return.
Story – The story here follows a crime boss who returns to London only to find himself getting caught up in the middle of a string of revenge plans against him for his previous actions. This story could very well have been one of the best ones in the gangster, crime boss style ones for years. We end up spending so much time just meeting the crime boss and seeing him try and leave the world behind, by the time we learn about most of the main targets motives, we are a long way into the film. This story does seem to lack the structure to make us care about any of the characters, because with the right build up, we could have given a lot of these characters sympathy and supported their decisions, instead of just ending up watching them make the same basic mistakes, talking too much. The story does try to be so clever with how everything is unfolding, but ends up falling flat because of the lack of interesting characters in the film.
Themes – Nemesis is a crime thriller that takes us into the locations you would expect to see around London, the local pub for the criminals to roam around, nothing that ends up being unique.
Nemesis is a movie that has so much potential with a concept, but doesn’t manages to put the pieces together to make it click.