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 riter/director Jesse Warn's "Nemesis Game" is a
mild diversion. It's not bad enough to be useless, but it's also not quite good
enough to surpass average. Wait, does that make sense? Well yes, if you've seen
"Nemesis Game", which stars Carly Pope as Sara, a college student who
is searching for the meaning of life via games involving riddles. Her playing
partner is older man Vern (Adrian Paul), who looks surprisingly buff for a guy
who runs a comic book store.
In about 90 minutes of running time, we watch Sara get
deeper and deeper into a mysterious game involving murder and a clearly loony
(or is she?) woman name Emily Gray (Rena Owen), who just might be the creepiest
woman to ever be captured on celluloid. Since the accidental passing of her
mother, Sara has been a social outcast -- or at least that's what every
character in the movie keeps telling us, although it's amusing to note that for
a loner "outcast" Sara dresses surprisingly well, not to mention
sporting an expensive haircut that clearly needs daily attention. I expected a
loner to look a bit more disheveled, but maybe that's just me.
"Nemesis Game" wants to be a psychological
thriller, but it's mostly just average. Writer/director Warn seems to think he
has the makings of a philosophy paper in the guise of a movie. As a result,
"Nemesis Game" asks a lot of questions about life, why things happen,
etc. Apparently there's a grand design to life that can only be understood after
one solves a series of riddles. Although why the riddles are so childish and
simple doesn't really seem to make much sense. Then again, I'm sure Warn knows
more than we do, so why question him? Wait, isn't the whole movie about
questioning things? Now I'm confused.
The whole ambiguous ending gimmick is a favorite with
filmmakers who realize they've written themselves into a box. Once you've
declared that your movie is going to be "deep" and
"thoughtful", it behooves you not to offer up a straightforward
payoff, lest you be accused of giving "easy answers" to the mindless
moviegoing horde. We are supposed to "imagine the answer for
ourselves", only I didn't pay good money to see a movie that asked me
endless stupid questions just so I can do something myself. You'll forgive my
cerebral laziness.
Adrian Paul, last seen stinking up the joint as a silly
vampire in "The Breed",
and as a silly VR program in "Codehunter"
before that, dyes his hair blond and finally gets a good role to sink his teeth
into. Paul's Vern is the best thing about "Nemesis Game", and I wanted
to know more about his character. If not that, then at least what happened to
Adrian Paul the actor. He had a burgeoning movie career coming off the
"Highlander" TV series, but has since shown up in very minor secondary
roles in lousy, secondary movies. What happened, Adrian? (Hey, more stupid
questions! I blame it on the movie.)
Instead the movie follows the Sara character from beginning
to end -- in fact director Jesse Warn really seems to like shooting actress
Carly Pope in close-up and from a low angle, so much so that I now know Pope's
face has an odd shape to it, and her nose is really small and sharp. We also
learn that Sara's mother died in a car accident and she's very ticked off at
daddy for remarrying so soon. That, and every character keeps trying to convince
us that Sara is supposed to be a traumatized loner/social outcast. Pope pulls
off the traumatized part, mostly because she seems to have only one facial
expression, but again, those sure are nice threads and bouncy expensive hair for
a social outcast. You'd think a social outcast wouldn't be so worried about her
appearance, but you'd be wrong.
I'm not trying to say that "Nemesis Game" is a
bad movie. It's a relatively harmless movie, and despite its delusions of being
"deep", it's a simple movie stitched together by riddles normally
found in Kindergarten classes. Which leads me to this conclusion: If the meaning
of life lies at the end of riddles like, "When is a door not a door?",
then the meaning of life must really be worthless. Or at least really lame.
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