Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob.
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about the nineteen ninety two cyberpunk action film Nemesis, directed by the cyborg dream weaver Albert Pune, starring French kickboxing champion Olivier Grunaire, as well as our old acquaintance Tim Thomerson, who listeners might remember from our episodes about Trancers two we're in which the Trancer's franchise. He plays the hero of the franchise, Jack Death.
I think that's just d et they leave out the A. And he was also in Metal Storm The Destruction of Jared Sin. I mentioned that right at the beginning of this episode, because did you notice that this movie today also has a Jared sin in it?
We have a Jared I didn't I somehow overlook the fact that they were a Jared Sin.
Well, she is named Jared, and she is a robot, a cyborg, a synthetic organism. She frequently mentions the fact that she is synthetic. So I don't know, interesting overlap. Yeah, so this is somehow our first Albert Pune movie on Weird House Cinema. Not the first time I've considered doing an Albert Pune movie, but the first time we've actually gone ahead. We've gone across the starting line with one.
It will absolutely not be our last. I kind of I feel that I am at the beginning of a magnificent personal journey, which is a journey into the Pewn zone. And who knows how I will be transformed if I return from this journey, but I'm very excited to see what it holds.
I too, have been hypnotized by the Albert the cinematic Albert Puniverse, if you will, and I think I currently have the next three Nemesis movies in my shopping card.
See Too takes Out. I was trying to figure out what's the best disc to get, but I don't know if there is actually a good disc release of these, so we may just have to go with what we can get.
Yeah, Nemesis, as we'll discuss, though, Nemesis is I think widely considered the best first stop if you're getting into the works of Albert Pune. I should also mention, this is our first Albert Pune movie. We have mentioned him before. I believe in all previous mentions we have pronounced his
name wrong, and we have said Albert Pyune. An easy mistake to make, especially if you're just kind of in the reading the boxes and reading IMDb and letterboxed and sort of you know, just processing it all in your head.
But it is Pune, p y u n. I had always said Pyun, but I went to make sure this time, and all the interviews I found of people saying his name, they were saying Pune. I could not find a video of him saying his own name, which is what I always try, and then I couldn't find it anywhere. But anyway, to set the stage, I just want to read from the back of the VHS box, because this the description of the movie on the box both gives you some incorrect ideas about the movie, but also explains more about
the movie than you will understand from watching it. So it says Los Angeles twenty twenty seven, and not that year. We're almost there, were almost there. Japan and America have merged politically and economically. Man and machine have merged as well. The scientific community has perfected cybergenics to the degree that any body part can be replaced. Nemesis is an action
packed sci fi thriller where information is the ultimate power. Systems, cowboys, information terrorists, bio enhanced gangster, and cyborg outlaws all play a part in this battle of man versus machine. In the future it pays to be more than human. Is information the ultimate power in this story? I think guns, Yeah, machine guns definitely are the dominant power in the film. Sometimes rocket launcheris as well, and volcanoes can't forget so.
To start off, As reviewers have noted over the years, Nemesis is, yes, in many ways, derivative of the big movies in this like tech noir or cyberpunk subgenre, whatever you call the subgenre of action movies from the eighties and nineties where people wear sunglasses and long trench coats and shoot machine guns, so it is definitely derivative. You will notice scenes and images lifted, sometimes quite blatantly, from
movies like Blade Runner, Terminator, and RoboCop. That's true of most of the lower budget sci fi action movies of this early nineties era. It's certainly true here, but once you get past that I found myself really being one over by Nemesis. It started to feel fairly unique. It was absolutely entertaining. I was not bored by this movie, and in a strange, hard to describe sort of way, I even found it kind of lovable, like it charmed me. Yeah.
Yeah, I had a very similar experience with the film. Yeah, I kind of had my guards up. I've long been aware of this movie, but I've just never gotten around to seeing it. And I think for a long time I kind of thought that I was better than this movie in some way, like that it was going to be too derivative. And it's a that's a weird kind of stance to sort of subconsciously take because I love a lot of derivative films. I love a lot of
trashy and less than perfect examples of cinema. So I don't know, it's just go to I would see Nemesis on the shelf, because Nemesis is definitely a video rental store superstar. If you grew up going to vhs and DVD rental stores, you're familiar with the poster or at the box art here, and yeah, I just was always like, that's not for me. I'm gonna rent Terminator instead. I'm gonna rent more of the alien movies instead, I'm gonna watch RoboCop or Escape from New York or whatever it
may be. But yeah, it's like, this is an example where all of these influences have been added to the soup, but then everything has come together with some unique flavors and I think some unique takes.
Yeah. Yeah, Now I'm not gonna lie. All of those movies you mentioned I think are clearly much better movies than this, But that doesn't mean Nemesis is without its own charms. So there's a lot that makes Nemesis a counterintuitively endearing film. And one of those things, again, this is gonna sound weird, but I'm gonna try to explain one of those charming things about it is how incredibly
unnecessarily complicated the plot is. Yes, to watch Nemesis in real time without the aid of supplemental explanatory materials or notes is to find yourself in this constant, rolling state of who is this? What are these people talking about? Oh? Oh, okay, I guess that lady was a cyborg. But somehow it all works out like you never know what's going on, but it just comes out in the wash.
And we have to stress when we watch a movie for Weird House Cinema, we're giving these films dedicated viewings, that it is not always a guarantee, you know, especially today in our very distracted mindset where if we're watching one thing, we probably have a phone in our hand or we're trying to do three other things at the same time. But yeah, we gave this film dedicated viewings and it's still it still was very hard to make sense off.
Still, so I usually for Weird House, I watch the movie twice. I make notes, so like we are really diving in. But still there were things that I was
really struggling with. But somehow in Nemesis, the confusingness itself, like the baffling list of political factions and the tenuously established third parties referenced in every scene, and this feeling that the movie is just rushing past you and not the least bit concerned if you have managed to get abored and get buckled in all of this becomes a hilarious and delicious texture of its own, Like it's really pleasant the way the movie trades off between these long
stretches of baffling non exposition with sudden irruptions of like
demented cyborg bullet mania. Another thing I was thinking about on my second viewing of the film is that it's not just hard to follow because of the writing, Like the writing is very complicated and elliptical and has this leaving you behind quality, But it's also because a lot of the expository dialogue is hard to hear or hard to understand, Like much of it is spoken by the film's star, Olivier Grenaire, who no offense to him like I greatly enjoyed him in this movie, but his delivery
is quite often flat and uninflected in a way that makes it kind of hard to actually track the meaning of the sentences.
Yeah. Another thing that I think about the I was thinking about regarding the plot here is this is a film that could have greatly benefited narrative wise, from an outsider character who needs things explained to them, you know, Jack Burton, if you will, Who's like, who are all these guys we're fighting and then someone has to explain it to them, or or a you know, a damsel in distress, which would be, as we'll discuss, vastly out
of place in in a Pune movie. But you know, someone like that, a character, a trope character like that, he needs to be told who everyone is. We don't have that. Everybody knows who everybody is. We're the ones you need answers.
We're the exactly Yeah, we're the odd characters out here. But the other thing that makes this movie confusing is that multiple characters keep changing what they look like.
Yes, and not only like different wigs, different outfits, but like this is a cyberpunk film. This is like a transhuman future in which you may have a different body and it can take a while to realize that.
In the narrative.
For me, that was the case where I was like, oh, this is actually that character from earlier with a different mind in their body.
Wait a minute, Jack Death is actually now has the brain of the lady in the blonde wig from earlier. Yeah that I didn't get that till the second time I saw it.
Yeah.
Anyway, with this confusing rushing past you quality, it started to feel to me like Pune is having some kind of amazing in joke with himself elf, where you have these scenes where characters are arguing about the Brazil Triad and the Red Army hammerheads and talking about who's a cyborg and who's not. And then like, obviously the target audience of this film, like the VHS sci fi action movie audience, zero percent of them are following all of this.
And then just in the middle of this conversation, oh, cyborgs are cutting holes in the wall with machine guns, and now it's a gunfight.
Yeah, machine guns in this film can be used as demolition tools. They can be used to clear cut jungle. Everything is on the table.
I also just wanted to mention you ever go on IMDb and you can look at the sort of theme or content tags for a movie that it gets sorted by, and like the themes that people are most that people most associate with a particular film. The top tags for this movie on IMDb were male, rear, nudity, nude fighting, man in a shower, man carries a woman over his shoulder, and cyborg.
Those are all spot on. I think cyborgs should really go first. Yeah, but yes, those are all definitely in play.
You know, we're going to talk later about the career of Albert Pune, but he if you know anything about him, you probably know that he made cyborg movies like most of his movies are about cyborgs fighting in some post apocalyptic landscape, and yet there is a quote by him that's featured at the top of his wiki page. He gave some interview years ago where he's saying, basically, I'm
not really interested in cyborgs or post apocalyptic stories. It was just it was just a way that I could make movies for the budget that I had, and I don't that did not make a lot of sense to me. But also I found that I found that also like sweet. I just love that.
Yeah, so Nemesis eff for my money. Several things really impressed me with it. For starters, I think the film looks great, especially with the you know, the remastered version that is widely available now. It makes tremendous use of like cool, ruinous locations, and especially some great locations from Tucson, Arizona, and the Big Island in Hawaii, including the other worldly locations in Volcano National Park, one of the most amazing
places I've ever traveled to. And I can't think of another film off the top of my head that actually utilized these landscapes. But it looks great here.
Absolutely, the outdoor locations featured in the film are excellent. They are well chosen for the scenes that take place in them, and they look beautiful. I know, I think Pune was from Hawaii, wasn't he?
He was Hawaii born for sure.
Yeah, And so I started wondering if Hawaii is just like a common setting in his films. I don't know, but it feels I don't know what the term is. It's just like very well integrated with the narrative here, even though it's not actually set in Hawaii. It's supposed to be supposed to be taking place somewhere in the island of Java, but the Hawaii locations just feel very lived in from a creative point of view.
Yeah. Absolutely. And on top of those locations, you just have cool atmospheric lighting in general cinematography via George Mohradian, and all this helps to bring this cyberpunk dream to life. And on the whole, the film achieves what it sets out to do with its special effects, which is no small feet. It almost never reaches beyond its grasp, which is saying something for a nineties low budget me movie.
We've seen plenty of examples of some of films, even high budget films, where you're like, yep, you try to look for something you really couldn't quite achieve yet, either from a technological standpoint or a budgetary standpoint. But I feel like most of the effects in this film are like, Yeah, they nailed it. I bought that. That totally worked.
Yeah. By contrast, you've got these nineties high budget movies in the same genre that you see GI that now looks like, oh, get that out of my eyes. But this movie looks way better than its budget. The special effects, by and large, I thought were excellent.
Yeah and yeah. I would also say that if Put definitely creates a cyberpunk dystopia that is certainly confusing, but it feels rich and fully formed, Like even though I don't understand everything that's going on, I trust that he understood what was going on here. Yeah, yeah, and it Yeah again, it doesn't feel too derivative in the long run, like everything comes out fresh, the vision feels pure. And on top of that, this is an action movie and
there are just absolute badasses everywhere. Yes, like everybody's a badass and generally convincingly so.
Yes, the exact format of the badasses is it varies and in all the different ways that it has made manifest here. It's pleasing in each way. So some of them are like comical in the way that movies from this era off and are with these like big beefy cyborg guys wearing sunglasses in suits going down you know,
hallways with gigantic guns that just looks so funny. And then on the other hand, you've got you've got like kerri Hiroyuki Tagawa in this movie, who is just I don't know exactly what he's doing with the accent he puts on in the movie, but he bring he brings that like amazing villain turning hero sneer in it. Yeah, yeah, awesome screen presence as always.
Absolutely, you know, this is something else that surprised me about the film. So again it's it's cyberpunk. Cyberpunk brings in a lot of noir elements. And as we've discussed before in the show, if you're if you're doing doing noir, uh, and then if you're doing cyberpunk in various forms, you know you're gonna bring in a lot of like grittiness. So we're talking about genres here that often come with a great deal of baked in sexism, exploitation, and even
a meanness at times. And yes, Nemesis is a super violent tale with ample nudity, and it's set in a cyberpunk dystopia, but I found it like refreshingly kind of neutral on gender and sexuality. I'm not saying it really does anything with the with this neutrality, but but the male and female form seem equally fetishized by the camera. Character names seem somewhat randomly assigned, regardless of any gendered
weight that the name itself might have. Pretty much again, everybody gets to be a badass, and even when with a we even have a fair amount of body jumping as well. That kind of blurs the like the gender line here as well. So again not arguing that Nemesis is exactly progressive or anything, but it feels refreshingly free of some of the shackles you might expect it to have.
I don't know exactly what this play is oriented toward, but it does feel intentionally playful with the gender themes. That the majority of the named characters have a name that is more often applied to the opposite gender, or have a gender neutral name, which is kind of interesting. You have like dudes named Marion and women named Jared and and like yeah, and characters are like body hopping
between different cyborg bodies of different genders and stuff. I don't really know exactly what, if anything, Pewan was trying to say or do with that, but it at least does feel kind of liberated and playful in that regard.
Yeah, it seem everything seems to play out on an assumption that in this future gender just doesn't matter anymore, you know, And then but nothing's really like, you don't we don't really dwell on that per se, but that seems to be the case, all right, elevator pitch for this movie, Joe, how would you sum this up?
It's a it's a magical tale of cyborgs yelling at cyborgs about cyborgs. There are so many conversations of one character accusing another character of being a cyborg, but then you later find out that the accusing character is also a cyborg, and the other character already knew that.
So I don't know, I think maybe three characters are not cyborgs.
Almost everybody is a cyborg. Everybody, every character, you're either going to get a revelation that, oh, turns out they were a Cyborg or you're going to get a revelation that they were secretly a member of the Red Army hammerheads.
Yes, yeah, right, Well, if you would like to watch or rewatch Nemesis before proceeding here, it is widely available for home viewing, as it's pretty much always been the current remastered version, you'll find streaming or for digital rental most places. Looks really good. I ended up streaming this time. I believe the MVS Rewind Blu Ray, which came out
in twenty nineteen, is the prime physical media choice. And this company also put out its sequels Nemesis two, three, and four on a single release that again, I have to admit it's calling to me after this viewing experience. Currently hanging out in my shopping cart.
I am currently having to resist the urge to bolt physically away from the microphone to go click purchase on the two, three and four set. So we may be coming back to the Nemesis first.
Yeah, especially since it's my understanding. We'll touch on this later, but two, three and four are radically different, so they're basically different movies. We'll definitely come back connect more about that here in a minute. But yeah, let's talk about Albert Pune a bit more, the director and the rider here.
He lived nineteen fifty three through twenty twenty two, Hawaiian born American filmmaker, best remembered for his various action packed and often dystopian, cyborg themed B movies, many of which have become cult classics, and a number of them were commercial hits in their own ride like this is the guy, I think is people have really begun to widely realize like this guy had kind of, you know, almost Roger Corman energy when it came to, you know, a scrappiness
when it came to putting together low budget films and making them work.
Though, can I make a point of contrast love Roger No shade to Roger Corman here, but Pune Pune's movies to me feel a little bit less business oriented than Corman's productions. I mean, clearly there was some love of cinema with Roger Corman as well, but Corman was very concerned with with you know, cranking them out and having a mind toward the budget and being on schedule and
all that sort of thing. The Pune movies I've seen feel to me more driven by a pure and unadulterated love of cinema, an infectious joy and desire to make movies. I don't know if I know enough about Pute's biography to be sure of that, but that's how the movies.
Feel, absolutely yeah. So let's talk a little bit about his filmography here. His first film, first credited film, was nineteen eighty two is the Sword and the Sorcerer, starring Lee Horsley and Richard Lynch. This became a huge hit at the time on a very small budget, so that you know, kind of like, you know, punch the card moving forward. After this, he took on his first of many trips to the dystopia with eighty four's Radioactive Dreams.
I've heard good things about that one. His output after this was pretty steady for decades, with him averaging at least two films a year. Some for a while anyway, And some of the highlights from this period from the period on and the run up to Nemesis included eighty six is Vicious Lips, eighty eight's Alien from La MST three K fans may be familiar with that one. That's when i'd had seen Ages Ago in MST three K form eighty nine Cyborg, Joe, you're familiar.
With that one. I've seen that one. That is a movie about Cyborg's in a future dystopia. Sound familiar, but it stars Jean Claude van Dam. I think as a non cyborg, he's just a human martial artist. That movie is notable for several things. One is, I remember when I was growing up, my dad is a big fan of that one, so like, I think we rented that
and watched it. It has a character. It has an actor who appears in multiple Albert pun movies named Vincent Klein, who is He's in this movie too, as like a Hinchman later who shows up in the second act. But in Cyborg he is the main villain and he plays. In fact, all the characters in Cyborg are named after guitar are guitar brands or guitar techniques. So the villain of Cyborg is named Fender Tremolo and he plays that. The hero also is named Gibson Rickenbacker.
I was about to say, it's like there's got to be a Gibson in here.
There's a Gibson Ricken. That's John Claude van Dam. But the villain is Fender Tremolo, and he plays a pirate who wanders around the future wasteland just talking about how he enjoys the misery. So at one point they capture a cyborg who's like, I've got a cure for the plague that destroyed the world. I can stop all this death and disease, and Vincent kleines as but I like the death and disease.
Awesome. Yeah, I've never seen that. This one that that has I've long been aware of. Now I have seen the next one. I'm gonna mention nineteen nineties Captain America.
I saw this a long time ago, and we've talked about doing this on the show. It may happen not too far in the future.
Yeah, that's that's the Salinger one with Red Skull. Yeah.
Yes, let's see.
We also have ninety ones Kicks, Kickboxer two, ninety one's doll Man, that's Tim Thomerson as we'll come back to, and then of course Nemesis. Following Nemesis, some of the key highlights include ninety threes Nights as in Knights the Roundtable with Lance Hendrickson and Chris Christofferson. I was having a look at this one more dystopia here.
Yeah, it's got Chris Christop's I think cyborgs wandering around one desert of wandering around in the desert in Utah. Maybe it has cyborg martial artist monks. I think in the future dystopian desert.
Yeah, cool, unless see Another one is ninety three's Arcade. This is one you've been batting around for a while as the potential weird house selection.
I greatly enjoyed this one as well, except for it has an incredibly distasteful element in it later on, but we we may just have to get over that and do it. I think it's going to be a Christmas movie for us, Yeah, because it's ours a young Peter Billingsley from the movie A Christmas Story. It's not actually said at Christmas, but it's a movie about an arcade game that comes alive and kills people. It's Christmas enough, Christmas enough, all right.
And then Nemesis two in ninety five, so this was the first to feature bodybuilder Sue Price as the new cyborg character Alex Sinclair, so different last name, different Alex, but still an Alex and still very much a cyborg and definitely a roll crafted around it. Like an impressive
physical specimen. Then came Nemesis three and four in ninety six, Omega Doom in ninety six as well, starring Rutger Hower, and Pune remained active, but I believe several projects didn't see completion late in his life due to declining health. So Nemesis had a long gestation period apparently, and Pune was apparently at one point intending Alex Rain our main character to be played by thirteen year old girl. But the producers, the Shaw brothers, this is saj h not
the sahaw Hong Kong Shaw brothers. They were the producers on this, and they're like, we love what you have in mind here, we love the vision, but we have a secret weapon that we're about to unleash, or you have already unleashed on an unsuspecting box office. We have this thirty year old male kickboxer and want we want him to play the main character. So just make make adaptions adaptations here as needed. But shoehorned him in and we're good to go.
Perfect. Wait, so was the thirteen year old girl in the original draft going to be an lap d east Rite commando?
Like this guy is pretty much I think she was going to be, like I mean, okay, possibly a cyborg, very strong possibility, so it might not have been a thirteen year old mind in the body. And I think she was going to be like an infiltrator, so kind of like the like the street Urchins of Sherlock Holmes, but imagine that they work for an LAPD that is discussed as actually an international paramilitary force, and she would have been like reconnaissance or something.
Okay, there you go.
Yeah, so again, additional Nemesis movies have a cure have occurred, but Pune only directed the first four, but again, plenty of other cyborg films from Pune, two, three, and four All star Sue Price a little information about the sequels, just so I've written in case Smione was curious. Nemesis two is going to take place seventy three years in
the future and it's a desert chase movie. Nemesis three is a time travel movie that takes place in nineteen ninety eight, made at least partially with leftover footage from two, and then allegedly I've read that Nemesis four was kind of an fu to Bob Weinstein when Pune was sent back to Slovakia to do reshoots on a film titled
Adrenaline Fear the Rush. This had Christoph Lamber and Natasha Heinstridge chasing a ghoule in some sort of a dilapidated set or location, and he was He just went ahead and shot a fourth Nemesis movie while he was there, and it's generally considered his most naked film.
Wait. Sorry, I just had to look something up because I wanted to make sure I was remembering this right. I remember, this is not the only Albert pun movie starring Christoph Lambert. He also did an action movie starring Can you believe this this duo? Could you even imagine the power of Christoph Lambert and Iced Tea? Oh god, it's like a buddy action movie with those two. That's perfect.
I mean it had to be.
Called Mean Guns nineteen ninety seven. I haven't seen it, so I can't vouch, but I mean, what could it be? A bit amazing?
I think it has a following. I was looking around at different threads for people were recommending Pean films and some were naming that film. So yeah, again, I'm kind of excited about watching or Nemesis films I'm at the you know, I'm at that point where I have to ask a real existential question, like how many more movie viewings do I have left in my life? Do three of them really need to be Nemesis movies? I don't know hard to answer.
You got at least three left, and I think I think we know what those three are gonna be. Yeah, yeah, So you know how to describe what's going on with Albert Pune. I loved a Nemesis and I have and it has this cheery, in just deeply kind of goofy enjoyable quality. I have seen some people online comparing Pune to more famous directors of just notably failed movies, like comparing him to ed Wood, and I can see the comparison in the sense of making low budget B movies
with an infectious sense of joy and excitement. But I do not see that comparison in in terms of the level of competence in making the films. I think the Pune movies I've seen, and especially Nemesis, are definitely several steps above what you're getting with Edwood movies.
Yeah, with ed Wood, I feel like there was there was definitely passion there. There were also you know, various problems going on for him, he had his demons, but there was also a sense of like, my passion has been realized as cinema and so now we're good to go.
It doesn't matter how good that cinema is, but it has been cemented where you know, with Pune, like, yeah, I feel like, especially with Nemesis, here there does seem to be a real passion and determination to make it look good and make it entertaining.
Yeah, Like Nemesis is funny, but it also has genuine virtues.
Yeah, And so I think you it seems to me you see more sort of historic Pune dismissal. And since his passing, I think there has been a critical reevaluation of his work, certainly in the circles of film fans, where people you know, admire BAT movies and find things to love about BT movies. Certainly that the world that we occupy, And so I've seen him singled out for
his visual style. He's resourceful and even guerrilla style production sensibilities, his serious treatment of cyberpunk themes even when embedded in just delirious crazy action, and the strong use of female leads, which you know certainly can be found in multiple productions of his.
Yeah, this is the place in the outline where I actually took down that quote of his about cyborgs. So what he said was, I have really no interest in cyborg's and I've never really had any interest in post apocalyptic stories or settings. It just seemed that those situations presented a way for me to make movies with very little money and to explore ideas that I really wanted
to explore. And you know what, I believe him. Obviously he made lots of cyborg movies, post to apocalyptic movies, but it's clear that at some level he just wanted to tell stories and hash out something about conflicts about identity within a character or maybe like fear of loss of humanity or something, and the cyborg setting was a way that you could do that with, you know, maybe a way that you could do that in a way that you could secure funding to make a movie that
touched on those kinds of themes. So I don't know, hats off to Albert Pune. I am loving what I'm seeing so far.
All Right, Well, let's get into the cast here, and I'm going to try and lay things out based on faction, which might be might be a mistake, but hopefully this will make things a little easier to follow.
Well, well, hold on, before we do that, can I just say I think this is a good idea because it'll make more sense to talk about the movie this way.
But I do just want to flag before we lay things out by faction that I fear by doing that and by talking about the plot the way we normally do, like explaining all the details and organizing the characters into their factions, we might give the wrong idea about the feeling created when you're watching this movie for the first time, which is again, you're watching and it's like a for me, a thoroughly entertaining, enjoyable experience. But also I have no
idea what's going on. I don't know who's working for who. I don't know who these characters are, or or like who's a Cyborgan why?
Or who indeed is the villains the I mean we exactly, Yeah, I really it's a tough question to answer for sure.
So anyway, just please listeners keep that in mind. We're going to be presenting the story to you in a way that I think is maybe artificially well organized and clear. Just try to imagine if you're watching the movie, this information is coming at you in random order in a way that like you will be baffled by. Yes.
And also nobody stays in their faction pretty much.
There. It's a lot of faction jumping. But sorry, you wanted to start with the LAPD faction.
Yes, And really that's where our main character, I guess, sort of starts off. Like he's essentially kind of like a freelancer for them for the majority of the picture, sort of. This is the character Alex Rain, played by Olivier Greunaire born nineteen sixty French martial artist and kickboxer
turned actor. This was only his second film role, following his starring role in the nineteen ninety martial arts film Angel Town, and he followed Nemesis up with a long and ongoing career of action roles, a little fight choreography here and there, and I'm not familiar with the vast majority of it. I say this with love, but I think a lot of it gets into that realm of pure action shlock that is generally not my thing. A lot of people love it, and there's some pure action
shlock that I love. This guy went on to be like a major force, I would say, in the home video action schwock.
World, Yeah, the body oil centric action film. Yeah. I was watching a bit of behind the scenes documentary footage and there's a snippet of Grenaire reflecting on his experience making this film. I genuinely can't tell if he's talking about his acting performance in the movie or his personal behavior on set, but he says something like, I'm sure I was acting very strange, but that is unavoidable when you're at four percent body fat.
Well, he's definitely keeping it very tight in this film, as are most of the actors. I get the impression that's kind of a pune standard at least a fair number of actors in like tip top physical shape.
Yeah sos. We get scenes of him shirtless, just exercising, running in the sand dunes, and a lot of I don't know, accentuation of the of the muscled form, like it's it's all there. But you know what, Actually, there's a there's a lingering on all sorts of body types in the movie, because it's not just muscleman. We also get the camera has a protracted love affair with Thomas James, but later on and yeah, so there's just all kinds of stuff going on with bodies.
Yeah, Like I say that the camera is kind of pan sexual in this film. That's what I got from it. Yeah, all right, moving on through the LAPD again, not the LAPD, you know, but a future LAPD that may go on random missions to Indonesia.
Yeah, international as I think you said, international paramilitary organization. Yeah, yeah, with like a strike force. And only one scene as far as I know, takes place in LA which is the opening scene.
All right. The leader, I guess, of this faction, or at least for the purposes of our plot. The main LAPD figure is Commissioner Farnsworth, and he was played by Tim Thomerson born nineteen forty six. Yeah, this is Jack Death. Thomason started out, as we've discussed discussed before on the show as a stand up comic, but then did a whole lot of TV and film work, during which he became a frequent player in Charles Band films. This is
our third Thomerson movie. We've covered eighty three's Metal Storm, we've covered ninety one's Transfers two, and I'm sure we'll cover more of his films in the future. As His filmography includes the likes of eighty five Zone Troopers, eighty seven's Cherry two thousand, that's one that I fondly remember, ninety one's doll Man, ninety two's Bad Channels, and of course the other Transfers movies.
I think Dollman is also a Pune film, is it? Yeah, where Thomerson plays like a dirty, hairy alien cop who is only a foot tall.
But he's not the titular doll.
Man I think he is. He's like a foot tall, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, Okay, but he's not a hairy alien. He's battling a hairy alien.
No, he's playing Sorry, he's like a dirty hairy style, dirty tough, dirty Harry, like a tough talking, no nonsense, brutal cop. Okay, but he's an alien who's only the foot tall.
Okay, okay, gotcha? Uh? In this he is an lapd guy wearing a suit, sunglasses, generally has a machine gun, and it's just a I think, generally a great villain here. We've seen him with natural hero swagger in the Transfers films. He's great in those those movies, just a real joy, but here effortlessly eases into the role of a silver hair at authority villain.
There is something beautiful about the way that Tim Thomerson simultaneously has no idea what's going on in this movie, much like the audience, but also is on fire in this role. It's kind of captured. And again, I was looking at some behind the scenes interviews and they're talking to him. He says something like, I'm playing the villain of this film. Basically I'm some kind of robot. But in his scenes he brings this like the smoldering Skynet eyes intensity. So I don't know, that's like a really
wonderful combination. It's obviously over his head, but also he's all in. Yeah.
Now, obviously his character has some underlings. One of the underlings is Germaine. Germaine is played by Nicholas Guests born nineteen fifty one and Guest, I think without a doubt is best known to moviegoers for his role as Todd of Todd and Margo, the much traumatized neighbors of Clark Griswold in nineteen eighty nine's Christmas Vacation.
Oh okay, I didn't make this connection that it was the same guy. Yeah, So he plays a I guess he's supposed to be aind of pitiable but also not very sympathetic character in that movie. In this movie, he's just a slimy creep.
Yeah, yeah, he's slimy. This actor had a bit part in Wrath Khan and it's also notable that he's the younger brother of Christopher Guest.
Okay, in this movie, his character's name is Germane and he has a German accent. I don't know if they ever explained like his nationality being German and if that has any significance in the film.
Yeah, he's not the only German member of the LAPD though, because we also have the character what Merits played.
By Brian James Blade runner y Yeah. Yeah.
Most well known for playing the replicant Leon and eighty two's Blade Runner. He lived forty five through nineteen ninety nine, but he also had a million other tough guy, heavy and weirdo roles throughout his career. Played a general in ninety seven's The Fifth Element. He's also in Cherry two thousand, did a lot of sequels, a lot of TV's, a lot of TV shows. So here though, solid goon performance but with a weird phony German accent for some reason.
Yeah, he just stands around saying like we have him in our sights now. He comes off like he feels like a like a Nazi dentist from an old movie.
Yes, we also have a cyborg villain. I think this guy's lapd but maybe not. Again, maybe it doesn't even matter. Maybe he's Marion Mary.
I don't know who this guy is.
Yeah, he's he has a thing where his face opens up and there's a blaster and then we get that he's in that awesome slide battle late in the movie.
I love that part. He's one of the characters who, oh, guess he was a cyborg because he's got a gun inside his face.
Yeah, and I don't know who he works for, but he is opposed to our hero, so he is.
I think he's he's described as a systems cowboy.
Okay, whatever that is. He's one of those. He's played by Tom Matthews born nineteen fifty eight. Who is this guy? Well, American actor whose other credits include eighty five is the Return of the Living Dead and eighty six is Friday the Thirteenth Jason Lives.
That's Friday Part six. The first one with a zombie. Jason in Oh Nice, Yeah he plays he plays what's his name, Tommy Jarvis in that one the hero, but yeah, also love him in Return of the Living Dead, where he is the unfortunate new employee of the storage unit where they find the zombie.
The toxin gotcha, all right, So that's LAPD. Then we have this other faction that we've already referred to, the Red Army Hammerheads. This is a militant anti cyborg rebel group and they also seem multinational.
Yes, I did not figure out what was going on with them until towards the end of my first viewing of the movie, but they are actually a major player in the plot. And yeah, their politics are they are anti cyborg in some way.
So these characters made the only characters we can we can give like a ninety five percent guarantee that they're not cyborgs, but no more than ninety five. I think ninety five is the cap for any Albert pun movie, regardless of genre.
Exactly because they The thing is with most of the Red Army Cyborg the Red Army Hammerhead characters, they dress like cyborgs, so like some of them show up in the all black or with the trench coat and the sunglasses, which is how the cyborgs are signaled when we see them. So I don't know.
Yeah, they're using a lot of the tech, but it's like somebody at some point comes along and says, that's a cool remote you got. Wouldn't it be better if it were like integrated with your body? And they're like, nope, I draw the line right there, but I'll still use the remote. So the leader of this group again at least for the purposes of our plot, is this character ang You Live, played by Carrie Hirooki Takawa, who lived
nineteen fifty through twenty twenty five. So we we previously talked about Takawa in our episode on ninety five's Mortal Kombat, in which you of course played the villain sh Con, and sadly the actor passed away late last year. So in general, I would say go back and listen to our Mortal Kombat episode if you if you want to hear more about him, more about his other film roles. But yeah, this is a guy, a guy who always had great villain swagger, great in large roles, great in
small roles. Yeah, he'll be missed, but he's pretty pretty great here, and he is surprisingly not really the villain. He's the leader of the good guy faction to the extent that you can trust any faction in this film.
He seems like a villain when we first meet him, but I get well, actually, this may be kind of a grim dark, post apocalyptic world in which the factions are morally gray. Even the relatively good faction is pretty ruthless. So yeah, so he's the leader of them. We don't realize he's the leader when we first meet him, but as with his roles in the other movies we've watched, as within Mortal Kombat, he just owns the screen in every scene he's in.
Yeah, absolutely, even with that weird accident. Yeah, okay. Another member of the Hammerheads is Max Impact. Max Impact pops up late in the movie, and she is played by Merle Kennedy born nineteen sixty seven. This is our scrappy tour guide and rebel in Java. She previously appeared in ninety one's Dollar Man and was active on screen tool around in two thousand and two, with lots of appearances in TV shows and such genre pictures as ninety four's
Night of the Demons. Two ninety five's Leprechaun three and the two thousand and two film May.
I don't want to be unkind, but I'm gonna say some curious, curious acting choices with this character here especially, it really comes out in the scenes that are just Olivier Grenier and Max Impact talking to each other where You're just like, what is happening here? Yeah?
These are not the heavy lifters when it comes to dialogue in this movie. They're both in tremendous physical shape though, so there's at least halfway there.
Well, you know what, though I loved her scenes, like the line deliveries were very bizarrely formed, and so the character brings an incredibly strange energy. But I was never bored while I was watching them, Like their scenes were highly entertaining.
She felt to me like a combination of Peter Pan and tinker Bell, but with a rocket launcher.
Yes, yeah, like highly violent martial arts Peter Pan tinker Bell. Yeah, I agree, all right.
And then another member of the Hammerheads we have the character Yoshirohan, played by Yuji Okamoto born nineteen fifty nine, American actor with credits going back to eighty four. He even pops up in eighty six is The Karate Kid Part two. Other credits, often small or background roles, include ninety three's Robot Wars, ninety seven's Contact, two thousand's Fortress two, two thousand and six is Big Mama's House two, and twenty ten's Inception. Still Active also produces all right, okay,
freelance cyborgs and associates. This is kind of this isn't really a faction. This is kind of I guess the rest and I think all.
The Lost and Found bucket of gay.
Yeah, and they're all cyborgs. So we have this character, Jared, who's going to be important later on. Played by Marjorie Monahan born nineteen sixty four American actress, active from nineteen ninety through about two thousand and five, mostly on TV, but with small supporting roles in such films as nineteen nineties, The Bonfire, The Vanities, and ninety ones. Regarding Henry, she did seven episodes of Babylon five, and she was also in a mid ninety sci fi series called Space Rangers.
I would say, cool presence, very cool voice. She's going to not have a body for a large Porsche of the picture. She's going to be in a essentially in an iPhone.
Did you get the sense that this character they were trying to create a Meg Foster like presence with her. That's the feeling I got, and I think she mostly gets there.
I think so, yeah, yeah, but this was Yeah, you could easily imagine Meg Foster doing this role. All right, Another cyborg character we have, Sam, Sam is going to be very important? Is Sam kind of the leader of this group or the second and hard to say?
Hard to say. Sam is a character who does not seem important at all when you actually meet her, but then many scenes later, characters are talking about her and making you realize, like, oh, I really should have paid attention to who that was.
Yeah, it's like, I guess she's the main villain now you've realized later in the film, But.
You never see her again in the form she took when you've originally met her. You only see her in an altered body later on. Yes.
So Sam is played by Margene Holden born nineteen sixty four, and we have another Mortal Kombat connection because she played Shiva the fore Armed Warrior in ninety seven's Annihilation. She also had parts in eighty nine Strip to Kill Two Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure eighty nine's Doctor Caligari, and two John Carpenter films, Vampires and Ghost of Mars. All right, so some fun flicks in there. Okay, we also have Julian. Julian is definitely a cyborg and has some great scenes.
Played by Deborah Shelton born nineteen forty eight. She was Miss USA nineteen seventy. She was a nineteen seventy four Playboy cover girl. I had to look this up. This episode of this edition rather of Playboy that she's in, also featured a spread on Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling about the movie Zardas, and featured fiction by Joyce Carol Oates.
Wow. Yeah, what does that issue your sell for on eBay?
I don't know some of these I think you can pick them. They publish so many copies of these things. You can probably get them reasonably cheap if you don't care about quality.
Does Playboy still published literary fiction? That would be hilarious if it still did.
Yeah, I don't know that bit. I mean, I don't know. Playboy reachers right in and let us know. But certainly back in the day they did other credits for Shelton include eighty two's Blood Tide that has let's say we've looked at that one before. That's like a sea creature movie. She's also in Brian de Palmer's Body Double from eighty four. I think she plays a pretty major character in that
and has high billing. Certainly, I think brings the body to that picture circuitry Man two and ninety four in three seasons of TV's Dallas's.
She is confident and commanding in this movie. She plays a cyborg who has to set our hero right when our hero is at one of his lowest points and get him, like launch him on his true mission after he has been set astray on a false mission. Yeah, and she does so with great confidence and verve. And then she gets shot like ten thousand times by other cyborgs and exploded. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a commanding presence here, and she seems all in on the performance. Yeah, all right. We also have Rosaria. This is like a minor Cyde Work character played by Jennifer She's not a cyborg. She was I thought she was a cyborg at first. She's one of the anti cyborg people. Oh see, sometimes you gets hard to tell
in this future. She's played by Jennifer Gotti born nineteen sixty eight, American actress of TV and film who started out with a whole bunch of episodes of the soap Search for Tomorrow in eighty three, and she'd go on to do two different tracks, two different CSI's, and a supporting cast member on TV's Vice Principles from twenty sixteen
through twenty seventeen. All right, Thomas Jane is in this Yes, plays a character named Billy Moon born nineteen sixty nine, the star of nineteen ninety nine's Deep Blue Sea, which we previously covered Jane. You know, go back and listen to that if you want to hear more about Thomas Jane. And his character is kind of a bit roll here, and he stays naked for the entire duration of his screen time.
His entire arc in this movie, never puts his clothes on, never leaves the room where we meet him.
That's right, And as IMDb points out, ye ample shots at his butt much younger here though that I'm used to seeing him, so Honestly, if I didn't know it was him, I'm not sure I would have recognized Thomas Jane. Yeah, this was pretty early in his filmography.
I you know, mainly now I associate him with his role in The Expanse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah.
Certainly some strong cyberpunk elements to that role as well. And he yeah, I think Thomas Jane's terrific, But this was very early, good, early days for him.
He is a great actor, but he has almost nothing to do in this movie. He just stands there naked looking out a window for several scenes smoking a cigarette, and then the bad guy from Cyborg the movie Cyborg just comes into the room and kill him.
Let's see. Jackie Earle Haley could say the same thing about him, who plays the character Einstein in this who's like basically what a cyborg tech dude, cyborg doctor.
I think he is affiliated with the Red Army hammerheads. Okay, we only meet him at the very end of the movie. He's the guy there to do some cyborg patch up and be a tech wizard at the end who unleashes the data chip on the to do whatever it's supposed to do. Yeah.
Yeah, But of course, Haley, as an American child actor turned grown up character actor, always had a knack for weirdos credits. Going back to seventy two. His films include ninety one's Dollar Man, ninety two's Maniac Cop three, two thousand and nine's Watchman, Shutter Island in twenty ten, A Nightmare on Elm Street in twenty ten, which he of course plays Freddy Krueger, twenty twelves Lincoln, and much more
so small role. And again I don't know if I would have recognized him or even had time to recognize him if I didn't know he going to.
Be in it. What a strange and interesting and varied career. So he's in these Albert Pewan movies in the early nineties, doing doll Man and doing Nemesis. Then he's in Watchman, he plays Rorshak.
He does yeah so may it major a character?
And then he's also in Lincoln. That's Steven Spielberg Lincoln.
Yeah, yeah, I forget who he plays in Lincoln, but yeah.
I think he plays he plays one of the Confederate leaders. He's Jefferson Davis or somebody.
Okay, yeah, And and Freddy Krueger, and on the whole. The two bousand ten's Nightmare on Elm Street. I know people are very divided on it, or maybe they're not even divided. Most people don't like it, but I enjoyed it at the time, and I kind of liked his his Freddy, but you know, it was a different, different Freddy. It was mostly a no jokes Freddy, all right. And then finally, the composer is Michael Rubini born nineteen forty two.
We've talked about him before because he did the score for eighty Three's The Hunger, and he also did the score for eighty six is Man Hunter. He was a prolific Sessions musician, piano fighter, if you will, a member of the Wrecking Crew, a Sessions musician collective that was active in the sixties and seventies. I'd say the score here is fine. It maybe a little cheesy at times.
Maybe it should be a little cheesy at times. But there were a couple of stretches in the film where I was thinking to myself, man, everything that's happening visually on the screen is just so impressive. The score feels like it should be like a step or two higher in quality to really meet what I'm seeing on the screen. But again, this is highly subjective.
I know what you like, I know what you want. You want that sense.
Score if it had been a little sentier, Yes, I think it would have. It would have tickled me more, but again that's just me.
You know. Yeah, it's it didn't really stand out much to me, but there were some good elements. But it also had the kind of thing where, you know, it's the sort of movie where a character, two characters start kissing and then there's a saxophone lick comes in. Yeah, they gotta love that.
Yeah, Okay, you're ready to talk about the plot?
I think so.
I think we've set the pieces on the table on the game board, and now it's time to get out the five hundred page rule book to determine how to play it.
Perfect amazing. Yeah, we're about to begin a game of Warhammer and it's ten pm and we're starting. Okay, So, as we said earlier, you will somewhat get the wrong idea of the feeling of the movie from the level which we're about to explain it, because this is with the aid of a second viewing and notes, So we're bringing some organization here that it doesn't feel like when you watch the movie. So just imagine being more kind of lost and bathing in the vibes, bathe wallowing in
the cyborg pools as you will. One thing I did want to flag at the beginning of the movie is that the production company, Imperial Entertainment, has two different logos and they both play before the movie. The first one looks like it should be on a beer bottle. Did you notice this?
Yeah, it does remind me a little bit of what am I thinking of? A sing high? Is that the one?
I make the name wrong, But I don't know what It reminds me.
The beer that you get at Thai restaurants.
Yeah, that's what I get anyway. Yeah, so it's got like a like a lion griffin type thing. It looks like it should be like Imperial genuine draft. But then anyway, The film begins with mysterious flute music and a fade in on a man's head staring off to the side, expressionless, unmoving. He is wearing these double rimmed sunglasses that rob would you say that these are borgie sunglasses?
They're a little borgie. Yeah, you get the sense there might not be humanized behind those glasses.
Yeah, so opening my, you'll have to imagine this. I can't pretend to do the accent or the delivery perfectly, but think of this with a very uninflected, flat delivery with a heavy French accent. When the uplink came through with the work orders, I had a strange feeling everything was about to change for me. Maybe it just had something to do with the way the world is today,
bio enhanced gangsters, information terrorists, cyborg outlaws. And then we fade in on a shot of the Los Angeles City skyline, which we see behind this translucent orange haze. I think this is supposed to show how polluted the future is, Like, oh no, they're putting all this orange in the air. And what year is it? The screen tells us we mentioned this earlier. It's twenty twenty seven, baby. So I was thinking at this point, like, damn, should we have
waited one more year to cover Nemesis? But I couldn't wait.
Yeah, oh, the vault will be timely, so it'll work here you go.
Yeah yeah. So the monologue goes on. He continues saying everything's so congested with high tech overload that you start to feel a little numb. There's an old saying in my business, it pays to be more than human. I'm not so sure anymore.
I think we're on track. I think we think things are gonna match up. This feels like the twenty twenty seven we're moving towards.
Yeah future correctly predicted. Good job, Albert Pume. But one thing I wanted to know, so we've said that there are things like this. Again, the setting is funny in a lot of ways, but every now and then I'm like, that's kind of interesting. And the interesting thing here at the beginning is that we're getting this inversion of expectations with the idea that in this world, the age old conventional wisdom is it's good to become a cyborg. That
pays off, it's a good thing. But as of late, our protagonist has a dawning awareness that possibly it is bad to become a side.
Yeah, and that again, I think a lot of us can relate to that when we, you know, we don't actually have metal parts. Well, some of us the metal parts in our bodies, but we are not cyborgs in the sense that this movie sees cyborgs. But there is a certain amount of technological integration with the average person's life today that I think a lot of us are like sort of halfway through the transformation and we're realizing, you know, some of these augments were not a good idea exactly right.
So I think this is actually interesting and clever. Where we're halfway through the transformation, as you say, we're already becoming part machine. And it's just standard conventional wisdom that this is the correct way to optimize yourself, to become more valuable, to increase your opportunities. You have to integrate with the new technology to become a better human. But at some point you start wondering, wait, was this a bad idea? Anyway, the action begins. You've got Olivier Greunair
here playing this cop named Alex Rain. He busts into a hotel room with a woman. They're making out, rolling on the walls and panting, and the room is also orange inside too, so like the air quality alert is it got the inside air too? It's not good. Then suddenly the woman grabs Alex Rain by the throat and starts choking him with one hand, and she says, move and I'll crush your throat, and she frisks him for weapons, And while she's frisking him, the hubb a hubb a
saxophone riff plays and eventually she seems satisfied. I guess that he doesn't have any weapons, and she lets off the pressure on his throat and she says, you can't be too careful these days, there's undercover police everywhere. So then she starts getting sexy again, but out of nowhere, Alex Rain pulls out a handgun.
I think it's her handgun, right, I think he pulls her okay, like a holster at the small of her back.
Yeah, she's got a gun tucked into her skirt. He pulls out her handgun shoots her and I was like, oh no, But then sparks fly everywhere and she turns back to him, revealing a big hole in her head with wires and circuit boards dangling out everywhere. So, oh, I guess she was a cyborg or a robot. Many such moments to come like this in the film. So she curses at him and says he's a cop, and he curses at her and calls her a terrorist, and then we get the title screen looks kind of like
the Transformer's logo. Do you notice that?
Yeah? Yeah, Nemesis. Not sure what the title really means. Who is the Nemesis? Who is it? Where we're talking about Nemesis in the Greek sense, or are we talking about it in the sense of just bad guys, and of which we seem to have plenty.
I don't know, you know, I'm ashamed to say this. I feel like I would need to refresh myself on the myth to understand if the myth has much connection with the film.
If I remember correctly, and I could be wrong. Yeah, the mythic origin of Nemesis is it is it's divine retribution against like abusers of.
Power and tyrants and so forth.
So I don't know that's the kind of thing that could fit into a cyborg dystopian cyberpunk world, but I'm not sure if we really see that here.
Yeah, So anyway, the scene resumes and the robot Lady's body is lying on the floor with its head blown off, and it's got the little servos worrying and a rubber tongue flicking back and forth. Alex Rain is strapping up for an action scene, so we see him like packing a bunch of guns under his duster coat and taking drags of a cigarette. Some cool electric guitar music lets us know that things are about to get super sick, and before he leaves the hotel room, he stops to
get some one liners in on the dead robot. It's like the laying there still shooting sparks on the bed, and he says, again, imagine that French accent flat delivery. He says, you see, laundering data can be dangerous. And then it's like maybe that one didn't work, so he does another one liner. He says, you break the law, you go to hell.
Well, now's the time to workshop some one liners, you know, because it's a captive audience that's not gonna they can't really criticize you too much.
Yeah, So Alex Rain leaves the hotel room and he heads down the hall. On the way to the elevator, he passes a group of four people, two men, two women, all wearing sunglasses indoors. He's also wearing sunglasses indoors. These four seem like bad news, like maybe they're gangsters or something,
and Alex Rain escapes down the employee elevator. The gangsters here find the mutilated robot or cyborg or whatever it is who they call their courier, and they figure out that the guy they passed in the hall was an lapd agent and that he I think he took something from the machine lady, though it's never very clear what that.
Was, and maybe a drive something.
Yeah, So they chase him out of the hotel and into an abandoned and dust real park that is full of these crumbling, half collapsed factory buildings where they are going to have an extended gunfight that I'm not going to narrate blow by blow, but I do want to note some interesting and funny things about it, many of which are true of the other action scenes that will come later in the movie. So interesting, good and funny things about it. One thing that's good about it is
this action scene has beats. Yeah, long time long time listeners will have heard me complaining before about gunfight scenes in action movies, which at least half the time I think are actually quite boring because usually the reason is they don't have any drama in them.
Yeah, it's just one side shoots, the other side shoots, people are talking and seeking cover or they're getting hit, but that's about all there is to it. Yeah, these action sequences tell a story, like there is a language of action here that just absolutely works. But it is also, you know, kind of impossible to to summarize for the podcast.
Yeah, exactly. So. The normal action scene that I get bored by is is when where there are no interesting developments or exchanges of power. It's like you said, it's just close up of one person shooting, then close up of another person shooting, until somebody gets shot. They don't feel unpredictable or like anything changes. Not the case with Nemesis. In one sense, the action scenes are usually funny because of how much overkill there is in the amount of gunfire.
Like it's not just too much shooting, it is beyond too much shooting. Yes, it has these like Lady Terminator levels of gunplay, which is in once it's that's so over the top it becomes funny. But the action scenes also have this level of drama in that they're interesting and unpredictable. They're kind of playful with this whimsical fantasy logic at work. Lots of things happen in them that
you could not do in reality. So, for example, Alex Rain is running into this industrial park and he's got a shotgun in his hands, and he's got to run. There's like a chain link fence in front of him, and he just shoots the chain link fence with his shotgun, and the fence pops open. There's like a hole in it for him to go through. I'm no shotgun expert. I don't think that would work. I don't think you can do that. But yeah, so he like does that.
But it works as just a cartoony, dramatic beat in this story that makes it continually interesting because things like that keep happening.
Yeah, it's almost like there's almost like an anime level of action to this film. Things that don't really make sense in the real world, but they make sense within the action economy of the action language of the picture. Here it is just how their world.
Works, unnatural extensions of things where like like he will be like fall down on his back and slide down something on his back while shooting and fighting someone, and there's this time dilation effect where while he's sliding down the hill, all these different things happen while you can be fighting somebody that would like there's no way all of that could be fit into the time it would take to slide down the hill, but they do it. It's got that fantasy extension of time and I love it, yea.
But on the other hand, you've got like these really funny things, like the way everybody is dressed. So Alex Rain is wearing a suit and a skinny tie under a long, heavy trench coat, and it looks hot outside, and you can see that the material of this coat is very thick. Of course, everybody's got these cool cyber sunglasses.
And then in this scene you see the first four henchmen that come after him are like three huge dudes in sunglasses, blazers and suit jackets with guns, and also one lady in this extremely short party dress with a duffel bag full of weapons.
Yeah, and the weapons are all you know. I don't have a great eye for guns. Some people love to like identify what guns are being used, what's been done to them, what sort of little additions have been like say put on an old World War two era pistol
to make it a Star Wars pistol. But to my eye, at any rate, these guns are gussied up in a fun way where they take on these like additional cyberpunk dimensions where I don't know, there are different extra tubes, extra rocket launchers, extra components.
Yeah, they're more like there're things like Decord's gun and blade run or like Robocops gun. They're like not really existing types of things, sort of sci fi. Also, eventually in this gunfight, another gangster shows up. It's this woman named Rosaria who is dressed like a like a cyborg
elf who works for Captain Hook. She's got the tech noir sunglasses, a black pirate coat with an upturned Dracula collar, black gloves, tight brown pants, thigh high black boots that have almost a Santa's Workshop kind of feeling to them. And then she's holding this enormous long gun with like four supplemental scopes on it.
And you're telling me, though, this lady not a cyborg.
Not that's the crazy thing I'm watching. I'm like, okay, so he's fighting cyborgs. She's obviously a cyborg, but if you listen to their dialogue later, she's very anti cyborg. So she could be a cyborg who's anti cyborg. But we never see wires pop out of her when she gets hurt like we do with the other cyborgs. We do meet other cyborgs who are anti cyborg, Like Jared turns out to be anti cyborg even though she's a cyborg.
But I don't know, I guess case may be partially open, but I'm like ninety five percent sure that's as high as we can go on the Pewan scale. Ninety five percent sure that Rosaria here is not a cyborg. She's flesh and blood. So in this fight, Alex Rain gets chased off the roof of this half collapsed building by two remaining gangsters or terrors whatever they are. It's the two women who are left, and he hides in a nearby building while they shoot bullets and rockets at him.
At one point they blow him up pretty good and we see sparks and metal coming out of his leg and he says arc that knee was brand new, So, oh, okay, here's where we find out. I guess our protagonist is a cyborg too, or at least he had a robot knee. And this is the part where I'm wondering, like, wait a minute, are the people he's fighting cyborgs? I thought they were.
But luckily the movies, the movie moves so quickly you don't have too much time to worry about these things because then something else is going to explode.
Yeah. Also, Alex Rain finds a terribly cute puppy in this exploding abandoned factory that's on fire.
Yeah yeah, completely extra but absolutely adorable.
Fuzzy puppy in there, and he's like, I must protect puppy. So he protects the puppy by hiding it in a metal locker. And then, despite his injury, ra Alex Rain continues to fight. He kills one of the two other fighters, and then the only one left is Rosaria, the pirate elf. And oh we also see on her hand she has a little tattoo in the shape of a hammerhead shark. So Alex gets incapacitated by an explosion and then Rosaria comes to confront him and she stands over his mangled body,
and then these two exchange some acting. This is funny because Olivier here he continues that the uninflected delivery, while the actress playing Rosaria positively just spits every line at him. She says, cops are animals. You don't know who that woman was back in the room. You don't know who I am. And he says, you're a terrorist, and she says, you're confused. We're trying to save humankind and you you
protect the machines. Well, no, wonder you protect them, and then she looks down at the wiggling metal parts that are blown out of his leg. She says, you are mostly machine. You're not really human anymore, are you, And he counters he's got a good comeback. He says, eighty six point five percent is still human, and then she sneers, and she says, none of you is human, never was, and then she starts shooting him in the machine parts. It's sort of a gun torture scene resembling the death
of Alex Murphy and RoboCop. But before she finishes him off, she has to get in some more insults. She tells him he has no idea what's going on. She says he's just stupid, and when she's done with him, there's no way that they'll be able to put him back together. But Alex Rain the thirteen point five percent cyborg has
some tricks up his sleeve. So while she's leaning over him heaping on all of the scorn, he thrusts his knee up at her and one of the exposed metal parts from his knee stabs her in the side, so he got her, and then a hovering police drone shows up. Rosari crawls away. The cute puppy comes out of the locker and begins to lick Alex's wounds, And I was just thinking, I hope that puppy does not cut its tongue on the robot parts. That's a complication. You didn't think about it.
I didn't think about that.
After this, we get a copy of the sequence in RoboCop where we see from Alex Murphy's perspective as his body is being reassembled by the scientists and modified with the machine parts, and it's got all the things from that scene are playing through, so it's complete with the traumatic echoing memory of a woman saying something emotionally painful. Now, in the case of RoboCop, it's Murphy remembering something something
sharp that his wife said. In the case of Nemesis, it is Alex Rain remembering things that the terrorist Rosaria said to him directly before she shot him. So we get the you're not really human? Are you not really human? Not really human echoing in his mind, and presumably after all this he is actually now less than eighty six point five percent human, though I don't remember if they state what percent human he's down to after each modification.
Yeah, we should have had like a running percentile on the corner of the screen. That would have been helpful.
So next we cut to sometime in the future. A text legend tells us that this is a place called Baja, New America. I'm guessing this is Baja and what is now Mexico. And we see a man running shirtless, barefoot in the desert, crunching over the tops of sand dunes, and he has a dog running with him. It's a big husky that looks like it's probably not enjoying the hot weather.
It's the puppy from earlier.
Yeah, exactly, the puppy grew up. And Alex says in voiceover, it took them six months to put me back together, synthetic flesh, bioengineered organs. It always scared me that they might take out my soul and replace it with some goddamn matrix chip. Is that a thing that can happen in this world? We don't know.
I don't know, yeah, being is he being ridiculous here, or is that just like straight up matrix chips will replace your soul?
Don't know? He says, I ended up in this god forsaken place on the edge of existence, the kind of place where people on the run go to be forgotten. I was there to recuperate. And we see Alex rain now in better shape than ever. So he's lean, muscle bound with a new haircut. In the earlier scenes his hair was short but still kind of shaggy. Here it is a military fade, so he looks like he's peak peak, you know, condition uh, and he he injects himself in
the neck with some kind of capsule. There will be much made of this later. I think it is some kind of painkiller. It's unclear to what extent this drug use is legal or illegal, but they call this behavior speed loading.
So the way, there's certainly a character judgment involved when someone is accused of being a speedloader.
So there's a scene where Alex goes to a bar which looks like it looks like a movie set. It looks like a built western town movie.
Yeah. This feels like something straight out of a Fallout video game, where yes, you're out in the in the midst of the wilds and you need to stop in and spit a few caps on some water, and I'm like a lizard on a stick.
Yeah, yeah, howdy, partner, I'll sell you some rat away. Yeah. So he goes to a bar. He's still barefoot, by the way, He's wearing bored shorts and a T shirt. He sits down, he orders a beer, and he sits there wearing sunglasses across from a man and a woman also wearing sunglasses. And the lady comes up to him and introduces herself as Rosaria, and Alex sees a hammerhead tattoo on her hand, and he says he's here to
get even. He calls her a terrorist, and then she and the other dude in the bar they freak out. The other dude tries to draw a gun and Alex shoots them both, saying remember la. So the implication is that this is the same woman who blew him up in the opening scene, the elf Pirate lady, but she looks different here. Also, she doesn't recognize him now. That could be because he is further borged. He's more borged than he was in the opening scene. Andy's got a
new marine recruit haircut. Andy's down to four percent body fat, I guess, so that could throw anybody off. But I don't know why. She looks different than she did before. But I don't know again, never established one hundred percent whether these two were cyborgs, but I think they probably were not because it seems their politics are anti cyborg. So Alex, in his voiceover, says, I wanted to tell this terrorist that I had given a lot of thought to what she said back in La about whether I
was more machine than human. I wanted to tell her she started me thinking, I really wanted to tell her all this as usual, to tell her you could have handled that a little differently, then.
You should have told her yes.
So he sits there drinking his beer while he listens to what he says are the sound of jet engines approaching, the kind of jet engines that LAPD used in their vehicles. Now we're going to meet two new characters. Two women are suddenly standing over his table at the bar. They're hitting poses like fashion models. They are both wearing skirt suits and wigs, one blonde wig, one a brunette wig. One of them in a long green trench coat, the
other wearing black leather gloves. And again must emphasize the first time I saw this scene no idea who these characters are, and did not understand the conversation that followed. But these two women are Sam and Jared. Sam is the one in the blonde wig, and she starts caressing Alex's body and she's like, hmm, the cyber transplants have really taken to you. You'll be all machine soon. And I guess she likes that she wants him to be
all machine. And the other woman, Jared, says shut up, Sam and sends her away, and then Jared, the other woman, tells Alex that somebody named Farnsworth needs him back online. Alex refuses, explaining that he is addicted to drugs, and he says, quote, nothing has been mine since I met you, Jared. And then she goes on a monologue and ends up saying you can't handle the job. You've lost the edge, become too emotional. And then he says, I can't feel
anything anymore. You turned me into an efing machine. I don't know what's right or wrong. So but at the same time, like they're in this deep conversation, but I'm just like, who is who's the boss here? Who are they?
I guess they used to like no what Jared is a former lover of his right yeah, and Sam and Jared both currently work for Farnsworth at the lapd and right, I think, because aren't they Yeah, I mean I could be wrong here, but I think they are. They arrived with the sound of the jets, like the lapd uses, and then they're saying, hey, Farnsworth wants you back, and he's like, I can't do it because drugs. Yeah, that's that's my best.
Path, Alex says to Jared. He says, I cared about you once, which is like, huh, you know, the scene didn't feel like that up until there. And then Jared says, I'm synthetic, so oh, I guess she's a cyborg. And then Alex says, and I thought you were real, and then Jared says, I never said I wasn't.
It's a little confusing, but there they also seem to be getting it, Like, you know, it's something a little deeper here about authenticity and being in this world where everything can be changed.
Sure, but I feel like there is a rapidly shifting valance of what it means to be a cyborg. Does being a cyborg mean that you can no longer feel and you no longer know right from wrong? Because multiple characters have already said that at this point, or does it mean that you're the same as a human and you can still know right from wrong and you can still feel hm. I I don't know if the movie
answers that. Also, while this conversation is going on, Sam, the lady in the blonde wig, is just pacing around in the background, like pretending to examine props in this dusty bar. But Jared says that her motives are pure. She says she is just part of the group that part of a group of people trying to make the world better. And then Alex says to her, what do you care about a better world? You're a cyborg but he's a cyborg. Yeah, And then he leaves the bar,
but she gets the last word. At an empty table, she says, I live here too, okay, talking about the world, I guess. And then after Alex leaves Sam, Alex's dog is there, the husky, and Sam holds a hand out to Alex's dog. The dog bites her finger off arks shoot out of her hand. So I guess Sam's a cyborg too, and then off screen she shoots the dog. Yeah.
Yeah, cute puppy did get to grow up, but now it's.
A Jared says, you're too excessive, Sam, and I love the modifier too in that sentence, Like without it, the implication might be that she's the correct amount of excessive.
Yeah, like you're expected to be excessive. It's an excessive world, but don't be too excessive.
Con there After, this is a moody shot of Alex and silhouette. He's standing against this pink orange sunset. He's at four percent body fat. He's digging a grave for his dog, and then he holds up across in the shadow as the grave marker. So is Alex Rain a Christian cyborg or maybe just culturally a Christian cyborg?
He is a potential savior, a potential martyr. I don't know, but it feels aut you know, we're talking about what episode could we do to follow up the last Temptation of Christ. Clearly it is ordained that said this was the correct thing.
I think it was Destiny. So later we cut to a shot of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio tells us we're now in Rio and it's one year later, and we panned down to the steamy industrial area with a bunch of smashed machinery all over the place, venting fog into the air, and Alex's voiceover says the next year was as grim as it gets. I slipped into the black market network that thrived in the new Rio Grid. I wanted to try my hand at smuggling, but I
guess I didn't really have the knack for it. My deals, when I could get one, usually ended up with somebody getting dead. Not a good thing for staying in business. And then he goes on to say, just when I was about to give up on Brazil, I got word this morning that some hot shot Systems cowboy wanted to see me. So here we get a look at Alex,
and once again he's different. He looks different. So he's got the trench coats unglasses, but trench coat and sunglasses, but now he has long hair, like glam rock hair like. He looks like he could be a drummer in a new wave band.
Yeah, you know. I This is another way that this film is kind of like feels like a video game experience, and the way that your player character may rapidly change their looks in between different chapters just because you're messing around with how they look and you're just spicing it up.
Yeah.
Also, it's kind of like a video game where you skip all the cutscenes so you know what's going on at times.
Yeah, you skip it so you don't So people are referencing characters where you literally you don't know if you're supposed to know who they are already or not. Yeah.
Yeah, sorry I held X on that one.
Yeah. So Alex has a meeting here with a guy named Marian, and this is Tom Matthews, the guy from a Return of the Living Dead. Didn't recognize him initially here because he's got long, stringy hair. His energy in this scene is Gary Busey with blackened teeth, and the conversation is also hard to follow, but I'll try to summarize. Marian tells Alex that he's getting a bad reputation with the Brazil triad. You really don't want that. And then Alex gets nervous and he pulls a gun and he says,
where's the Japanese tech with the chip? And then Marion reassures him and talks him down, but then gets Alex with the old cyborg face ambush where Marian's face opens up and a laser gun pokes out from a crack between his nose and his eye and then blasts Alex. So I guess this guy was a cyborg too. Yeah.
This effect is one of the ones that I was talking about where I felt like it looks really good, like they knew exactly what they could accomplish and it looks great.
Yeah it is. It is funny when it happens because of the situation, but the effect looks really great. Yeah. So Alex is lying on the ground damaged, and then Marian comes up to him and he's like, you know, no worries. LAPD wants you for an assignment, so they're going to patch you up. Goods new even better, so that human percentage decreasing everyone more.
Yeah, the same thing that happened earlier has now happened again. Somebody's gotten the better of him, shot him all up, and now he gets more cyborg parts.
So Alex gets handed over to LAPD and he wakes up in a sort of outdoor dungeon cell in the desert somewhere, and he looks like Rambo. Now he's got Sylvester stallone hair from First Blood Part two, and we meet three new characters that we meet. Farnsworth played by Tim Thomerson. Here's Jack Death in a business suit and a long coat, a very square jaw. We meet Jermaine played by Nicholas Guest in a business suit in sunglasses German accent. We meet Merritt's played by Brian James in
a business suit in sunglasses German accent. Farnsworth comes and looks in at Alex through the bars and he says he used to be one of my best hops. And the gist of the scene that follows is Farnsworth needs Alex to do one last job for him, just one more job, and he explains that what happened is Jared, Remember Jared and the Brune wig from the bar scene.
Jared has stolen a data chip containing crucial information about an approaching summit between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Japan, who we learned from the back of the box. Now the United States and Japan are merged into one political and economic body. I don't think they say that in the movie.
Yeah, don't ask too many questions about how this actually works. Ye.
For some reason, Jared is going to leak the leak data about this summit to a terrorist group known as the Red Army Hammerheads. Alex needs to find Jared within the next three days before she meets with the leader of the Red Army Hammerheads. And by the way, Alex, we have surgically implanted a bomb in your heart and it will explode if you don't succeed in your mission or if you try to defy us in any way. So he's going to have to fly to a city
on the island of Java. The city is known as shang Lu with a So he's gonna have to go and go with the bomb in his heart and get things done.
So obvious shades of Escape from New York here, But I like the way they did. And they have the little like the little lights on his flesh that show like how long he has until the bomb and in his heart goes off.
Well, I think that's after the character the other Julian later decrypts the bomb.
Yeah, she has a little patch that she gives him, the little tech patch that helps him out with this.
Yeah. So both Merrits and Jermaine are these nasty Weasley characters. They're always acting suspicious and superior. Merits has I was saying, he has an accent like Doctor Strangelove. And Jermaine just makes non stop threats against Alex and also totally random racist comments about Japanese people, for which Alex calls him
racist and then knocks him out cold. So alexid intolerating that, and then Farnsworth simply comments, you haven't lost your edge, Alex, so yeah, But then Alex tries to refuse the mission, but Farnsworth calls out, remember the bomb in your heart, Alex, and Alex is like, oh, yeah, the bomb in my heart. So I guess he's gonna go, and there are three days until his heart explodes, so Alex leaves in a helicopter. But then when he's not present, we see Farnsworth scheming
with Germaine and we learn it's a double cross. They fed Alex a fake story about what happened with Jared, about what they want and why he's going. The truth is they need to find Jared and they think that he's the only one she trusts, so she'll come out of hiding when she sees him show up in town. So he heads off to Java with the tip that he's supposed to meet up with somebody named Julian, who
can I don't know, I don't remember what the idea is. Anyway, here we transition to Shanglu and in this part of the movie it starts to have a feeling like Yo jimbo, or like a fistful of dollars, where a guy comes into a small town where the streets are empty. Violence is ready to erupt, and everybody sits around inside peeking out the windows at the new guy while he walks around in the streets.
And these streets are everything in Shanglo is definitely Big Island, and the street you know, everything's lid and shot for effect here and to look cyberpunky. But yeah, these are just like the streets still look like this in various towns on the Big Island, and yeah, these are great locations.
Once again, Olivia Grenaire has a different look. You've got a different haircut, different clothes here. While walking around on the streets, he is repeatedly attacked by gangs of big men who I'm sorry to stereotype, but they do not look dressed for crime or for the tropical climate. It's like he's being jumped by a bunch of guys who
work for the Rand Corporation. They're all just like or pleated khakis and tucked in shirts with belts, but also black leather gloves, and so they attack him, but Alex easily beats them up, and after he knocks them all out, he says to no One in particular undercover, and then Alex walks away, and then all of the guys stand up at the same time without comment or expression. So I think these guys might be cyborgs. And one of them is Finoli Thorson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think we even mentioned him in our cast. But of course this is longtime co star of Arnold. Pops up in a number of Arnold films and sometimes in some very very fun roles, sometimes very forgettable little roles like this.
Yeah, he's in like the Conan movies and stuff, and he he.
Has a memorable he's one of the underlings of Thulsa Doom I think so.
Yeah. But he also has a memorable turn as the main villain of a very funny B movie called Abraxas starring Jesse Ventura. Yeah you have seen this. Yeah, he plays the villain named Secundas, who is often referenced by Jesse Ventura in sudden lines where he just turns to someone and says, I must locate secundas. But anyway, in this segment of the movie, we also see a character who will become major in the second half of the movie.
This is Max Impact. Max spends a long time just tailing Alex around town and keeping an eye on him. She has a weird, nervous bird like energy, often cocking and bobbing her head like a chicken. Yeah yeah. And also, we're gonna just keep meeting new characters. They're just piling the characters on. We meet Julian played by Deborah Shelton and Billy Moon played by Thomas Jane. They like to stand around naked and disgustingly sweaty and peep out the window.
The camera is very interested in both of their butts and in their sweat, where it's just showing the dripping with sweat.
High level of sexual humidity in this room without a doubt.
But also this makes all of the bad guys in the suits and the pleated khakis especially funny. By contrast, I guess just because like it's well, I don't know, maybe you're saying like it's just the heat of the passion that's making them this sweaty, But I was thinking it's supposed to be the weather.
I mean, I think it's the passion. I don't think these two have been setting around talking about politics the whole time.
So plot wise, I truly cannot explain the full deal with Julian and Billy Moon. Even now I've seen it twice and made notes, and I still don't understand what's going on with them. They're involved in some kind of setup or trap for the hero because Farnsworth and the German creeps are scheming about this. We hear them scheming about it. But what is the nature of the trap?
Well uncertain, Okay, at least in my viewing. Yeah, and you know, it is a very distracting scene because again, these are these two people are naked the entire time, so you'd be forgiven to sort of maybe lose the thread of the conversation given what's visually going on here.
So yeah, and they're naked, and we see on Billy Moon's army as a tattoo on his arm that says Billy Moon I love Yeah exactly. It's like a name tag, but only if you're naked. So Billy Moon does not last long in this movie. He just stands there naked for a long time. The camera gets these angles on his butt cheeks, and then finally Vincent Kleines shows up, comes into the room and kills him. So, as we said earlier, Billy Moon never leaves the hotel room where we meet him.
Now, Julian beats up Billy Moon a bit here, and apparently Deborah Shelton really did sort of rough up Thomas Jane a little bit. Oh no, and then it's fine, It's fine. Maybe even helped him out and helped him have a little more rugged good looks.
You know. Deborah Shelton is one of the actors that I saw an interview with from behind the scenes, and seemed to me that she was taking her role in this film and the themes of the film quite seriously. She was like, it is an interesting movie that has something to say about humanity, and so I'm all, I'm invested in this.
Yeah, And I think she also did like some sort of crazy workout regime to make sure that she was trying off for this. Yeah, she's buffing intimidating here.
Yeah. So Alex checks into the hotel where Julian is staying and he meets another character named Yoshirohan. He's the guy who runs the hotel desk. This guy puts on an act first like at first, like he's just a hapless employee. He later turns out to be a serious Red Army Hammerheads operator. So again, basically everybody in the movie either turns out to be a cyborg or a Red Army Hammerhead. And then Alex he goes checks into his room. He starts to prepare one of his painkiller injections,
so he's about to speed load. Uh oh, you know what that means. But then he thinks better of it and he smashes it on the floor. So it seems like he's going to quit the drugs, and he says to himself, no more of their drugs. If Farnsworth is going to kill me tomorrow. I want to be clear. I hope Jared really hurts Lapd. I really do. She can sell her data to the dogs for all I care.
Damn all right, but taking a stand against something for reasons.
Okay, So we still have not met all the characters that are around to me. We got to meet Angie Live played by Kerrie Hiroyuki Tagawa, first presented as some kind of gangster or crime boss. Later becomes clear he's a Red Army Hammerhead. He's all swagger and sneer. He speaks with this strange, interesting, synthetic future accent. He says, bra, yeah constantly, Bra. So Angie and a bunch of henchmen
and sunglasses go up to Alex's room. They beat him up and interrogate him, and he says, make it easy on yourself, Bra, I can find a place on you that's still human, where you can still feel something, bra,
and then he just knees him and crotch found. Angie says that the Hammerheads are freedom fighters, were not terrorists, were freedom fighters against information systems, and that the taunting and the sneering continues until Alex reveals that he has a bomb inside his heart, and this freaks out Angie
and his dudes. They get spooked and they leave, but before he leaves, Angie stops to ask Alex how he feels about becoming less and less human one surgery at a time, and Alex says he never had a choice. So next we get the meeting between Alex and Julian, so Julian takes her henchman Michelle again. This is Vincent Kleine to Alex's room. Michelle attacks Alex in the shower, so here's their nude fight scene mentioned in the themes
list here. But Alex shoots Michelle in the bathroom and sparks fly, so it turns out he was a cyborg, and Alex comes out of the shower naked. Julian explains that she needs to do a surgery on his cyber
eye to remove a surveillance device implanted by Farnsworth. Obviously, the ensuing eye surgery scene is inspired by Terminator with the self eye surgery scene in that, but it is I think this is truly gross and unique, like it's very good, like they put She's got a suction cup that she puts on his eyeball, yanks his eyeball out on this big stalk it's a metal robot stalk for the eye, and just stands there working on it while Alex is like uh, and then eventually puts it back in.
She also does a kind of digital hacking surgery on the bomb in Alex's heart, which is going to mean basically, it means the bad guys cannot blow up the bomb in his heart without decrypting her code first. And so he's got four lights under his skin. When all four lights go out, it will be decrypted and they can blow him up. Okay, now, as we're getting into the back half of the film, I feel like we need
to be more summary here in our discussion. So I'm just going to try to do my best to This is again not in the order that the information is actually revealed, but I'm just going to try to put all together what we eventually learned is going on. Julian explains that Jared remember her, Yeah, his former lover Slash,
the cyborg who's kind of his boss from Baha. She her body was destroyed while she was trying to escape La, but her mind and soul were uploaded to a data chip which Julian has in her hand, and she gives the chip to Alex. Julian gives Alex his mission. He's got to take the Jared chip to the Red Army Hammerheads, who were just in the room a few minutes ago, so missed opportunity there. He's got to take the chip to them at a meeting on top of the volcano
at sundown. For some reason, this will stop Farnsworth. But wait a minute, what is Farnsworth doing that needs to be stopped. Even on the second watch notes, I was a little confused about this, but I think eventually they explain. Jared figured out that cyborgs have figured out a way to make copies of powerful human beings, and they are one by one replacing powerful humans in the world with cyborg copies for the eventual goal of taking over the world for the machines and destroying humankind.
Okay, and this is going to have a direct influence on a character that we've seen a lot of so far, but apparently never really understand who. They've understood who they were right.
So it turns out the Farnsworth we've met in the movie Jack Death Tim Thomerson is not really Farnsworth. He is a cyborg cloned copy of the original human Farnsworth who I think we never meet in the film, who was created by it seems Sam, remember the cyborg lady with the blonde wig in the earlier scene, the one who was sexually harassing Alex. She's like, ooh, I like your augments.
Yeah, So Sam is now Sam consciousness is in a cybernetic Farnsworth. And interestingly enough, this character and like the IMDb credits is credited as Sam Farnsworth, So I guess you could think of Sam Farnsworth as sort of like the combination of Farnsworth's in Sam. Yeah, that's where we are.
So this exposition dump with Julian turns into an insane gunfight where Farnsworth merits. Remember the German guy. A bunch of other beefy cyborg hinchmen and sunglasses with these comically huge guns start blasting their way into the hotel room. They're literally cutting doorways into the wall with bullets, and Alex escapes the room by cutting a hole in the floor with bullets and falling through multiple levels of the hotel, cutting holes as he goes by shooting.
Yeah, this is absolutely bonkers. There's just so much machine gun fire, just blistering action. It's just unreal. I was really impressed, entertained.
Meanwhile, Julian covers Alex's escape, so she she and the cyborgs just kind of stand there shooting each other like thousands of times, like the scene in RoboCop with Ed two nine. But if we didn't establish this already, Julian is a cyborg too. After the fight, she's kind of all blown up and all her motor parts are all over the place. And then Farnsworth comes in and kneels over Julian and pokes her eyes out with his fingers.
Yeah, kind of like doesn't rea like he gets information from doing it too or something.
He's trying to Apparently, how cyborgs get information from each other is poke their eyes out to download the data. But then it's discovered that she already wiped her memory banks, so there's nothing left to get and he goes He's like, oh, very good, smart move. You know you wiped it before I got it. Julian says, you always were an extremist, Sam,
so she's talking to him as Sam. And then Farnsworth says, you're a cyborg and then Julian says killing all the humans isn't going to make you more real, and Farnsworth says, I am real, okay. So then Farnsworth destroys her memory banks and then he tells Merits. He says to him, Alex Rain will be destroyed somehow, some way. He's human after all. But I was like, wait a minute, he's human. I thought he was a cyborg. They're making a big
deal about how he's a cyborg. There is some distinction in this movie that is obviously crucial to the meaning of the story that is not coming through about some difference like cyborgs as either fundamentally machines or robots with human tissue and human appearance, versus a different kind of
cyborg that is fundamentally a human with machine augmentations. Both seem to exist in the movie, and they're both called cyborgs, but they're not really differentiated, except we're supposed to understand that there is a big difference between them.
Yeah. Plus, it does seem like it's more of a linear spectrum going on here, Like everybody is probably to some degree cybernetic. It's just how cybernetic are you?
Yeah? Anyway, Like on one on one hand, it's confusingly rendered in the story. On the other hand, I find it kind of interesting. It's like something is like stimulating my brain with the themes here. Yeah, something about this like linear spectrum of a linear spectrum of cybernicity where characters are arguing about who's over what kind of line on the spectrum.
Yeah.
So anyway, from here, the movie is largely a string of chase and action scenes just kind of racing to the conclusion. There's one part where Alex plugs the Jared data chip into this handheld computer and talks to he's got an iPhone, Yeah, and she's talking about the cyborg double cross. Jared is talking about Sam and she says she was retro cloned into a perfect cell or cell duplicate of Farnsworth. But if it's a clone, wouldn't that be organic not not a machine? Right?
And we're gonna say this is.
Sam. She says, Sam intends to replace humans with cyborgs. Sam has to be stopped before she starts a war between humans and cyborgs. The question comes up, why is Jared helping? Because she's because what Sam is doing is wrong. Isn't that enough? So even though Jared is a cyborg, she knows right from wrong, something that multiple characters say in the movie cyborgs are incapable of. And then Jared says, for what it's worth, Alex, I loved you, and Alex
makes a dismissive comment. He's like, yeah, terrific cyborg love. But then she says it takes more than flesh and blood to be human, Alex, and then Alex just gets into a bunch more gun fights with cyborgs. Oh, there's this great scene where a little old lady is being harassed by spin Ole Thorson as a cyborg, and she pulls out a forty five and blasts him and then just walks away swearing about cyborgs.
Just for comedic effect, just kind of out of nowhere.
The main thing that has to happen after this is Alex has to get this Jared data chip to the Red Army Hammerheads guy. Before sundown, there are a bunch of action scenes Alex fights. Remember that guy from Rio Marion, the Tom Matthews guy with the gun inside his face. They fight again while going down a water slide that's covered in mud.
Yeah, it's like one of these rolling slides that you'll see at like fall festivals that people will ride down in potato sacks, except this one's covered with mud. And yet the way I'm describing it, it might make it seem like it looks fake, but it doesn't. Like it feels entirely. I don't know, it just works. It's just a crazy action sequence with a crazy slide.
I loved this action scene. I was like cheering in the middle of it. Alex and the wins in this fight by smashing Marion's face on an overhead object as they're sliding beneath it. He still but it's like the end of Speed with Dennis Hopper, you know. So Alex ends up being both attacked and assisted by a guide by Max Impact, the lady we met earlier. It turns out she is the sister of Rosaria, the terrorists that he killed in Baja. She wants revenge against Alex. Instead,
she takes him to Angie again. That's Kerrie Hiroyuki Takawa, who is revealed to be the Red Army Hammerhead leader. But while they're negotiating what's going on, there's an ambush by the cyborgs. So just fighting all across Hawaii, Farnsworth, Farnsworth's bad guys, Ill Angie and the other Hammerheads, and the fighting and chasing continues. They go through like they go down a zip line at one point, and then
they're fighting in the forest. Max and Allex diving as well, I believe, Yes, some beautiful locations with like waterfalls and the volcanic rocks and streams cutting through them, and beautiful locations. At one point, either Max or Alex I don't remember which one shoots Farnsworth with a rocket, so it seems okay, he's done for he's been killed, but uh oh, Farnsworth is a terminator indoskeleton underneath, so he just turns into a stop motion terminator.
Yeah, and you know, this is maybe an effect that isn't as great as you might want it to be, but I don't know. I still love stop motion effects, even when there may be a little crunchy, and so this is still fine as far as I'm concerned.
It doesn't look realistic, but I like it. I like the way it looks, so so yeah, he's now chasing them as a term indoskeleton. Max and Alex meet up with Yoshirohan remember him from earlier, the other Red Army Hammerhead. They meet him on I think, on top of the volcano to escape in this futuristic jet plane, but the terminator Farnsworth grabs on for a ride. Rob can you describe this fight scene?
Oh? I mean, it's everything you'd want it to be. It is a stop motion fight sequence between the in the indoskeleton and Alex, with both Alex and the endoskeleton rendered in stop motion, you know, like a little little stop motion puppets. So yeah, it doesn't really feel real but looks amazing in its own way. They're fighting on the back of like kind of like the the opening, like the rear opening of this hovercraft or whatever it is.
And but they're also getting in some like final back and forth jabs about what it means to be human and who owns what parts and so forth. And I think that that basically comes down to how he frees himself, Like he's like something about like you know, you belong to us, and he's like, well, here you can have it, and it's not. His arm detaches, and so Farnsworth indoskeleton with his side with Alex. The cybernetic arm plummets and explodes in the volcano, or explodes in the way into the volcano.
Is dropped into a volcano and explodes. Amazing quality cut, wonderful, excellent. So after this there is a sort of a coda where they meet up with Jackie Earl Haley, the playing character named Einstein at some red Army Hammerhead lab I think they say in the Marshall Islands maybe. So whatever
the mission was, it is accomplished. It is accomplished. To quote the last temptation of Christ though somehow the mission requires the digital death of Jared, so the Jared computer program data has to be erased, which will mean she
ceases to exist. And then after this there is a there is sort of a coda coda where Alex and now Max are working together and I think what they're doing is they're going back to LA and they're like tracking down and killing all of the cyborgs that have copied people and infiltrated whatever.
Yeah, they're having like taking a smoke break in the pouring rain, yes, very soaked.
Very Yeah. There is a scene where remember Germaine, the guy the like the sniveling German accent guy who was making racist comments earlier. Well, Alex shows up on the roof of the L A p. D Building and shoots him in the crotch. Yuh so that guy's that that. I guess he was a cyborg too, so done with him? Uh. And then after this, oh yeah, the very ending is Max and Alex they're like, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna
do it all. We're gonna work together, and Max is like, how are we going to get your your body through airport security? Now that you're a cyborg and you have all this you know, metal in you, and he says piece by piece Max. That doesn't answer the question. Yeah, peace would trigger security. Yeah, but seriously, how are we going to do it?
I don't know. So there are apparently a few different endings out there for this film. The one I got on the version that I streamed, features the endoskeleton battle, which we already described, and then this bit of dialogue where we hear I think Farnsworth or somebody talking to Farnsworth saying should we take them out now, like somebody that's following Max and Alex. But then other versions shuffle things around. I think other versions don't have the endoskeleton battle,
so like don't establish the ultimate demise of Farnsworth. Or then there's versions that have the endo skeleton battle but don't have to should we take them out now? And in some versions we actually seen see Farnsworth at the end saying should we take them out now? Or someone telling him that. So I don't know. I guess you can sort of pick and choose how you want it. But I think the the intended vision here is that, of course the battle is not over a sequel of
some sort might be required. The threat has not been eradicated.
Well, I say boo to any version that does not end with them dropping Jack death into a volcano.
Exactly like, why did you got a film at Volcano National Park if you weren't going to do this? You know, I hate to see stop motion effects go to waste, so absolutely include that.
Okay, Well, this episode has run very long, but obviously we had a lot to say about Albert Pune's Nemesis.
Bravo. Yes, I loved it. Yeah, absolutely entertaining this. I highly recommend this one, whether you're intending to give it a very attentive viewing or you just need some just absolute delirious action to take place in the background. Either way you want to experience, Nemesis is completely valid. It's a wild ride.
All right.
We're going to go and close it out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do you have memories of Nemesis or other Albert punefilms from the past right in We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
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