Adrian Paul Week: Nemesis Game

Greetings folks and welcome back for Day 3 of Adrian Paul Week. Initially I was going to just do a review on The Breed but then I thought, "I have already seen this film and enjoyable as it was, I shall not view anything new." With that in mind, I found what IMDB considers an obscure mystery thriller revolving around a introspective student obsessed with puzzles and no her name is not Edlyn Nigma, you Bat-Man fanatics. With the story following a young college girl, you may ask yourself, "Well where does Adrian Paul fit in this equation?" This is Nemesis Game.

Yeah I went blonde.

Our film opens with a girl, name of Emily (Rena Owen of Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, The Straits, The Last Survivor and The Dead Lands) being interrogated by Detective Jeff Novak (Ian McShane of A.D., Lovejoy, Dallas, Nine Lives, Deadwood, Death Race and Kings) who clearly is befuddled by this woman who had everything and anything at her fingertips for life had to offer and then snaps like a twig in 1996 trying to drown a small boy in a lake and the crazy just keeps on a comin'. Apparently she knows the meaning of life and the absurdity of the cosmos. So did Jean Paul Satre, baby and all he had was a pipe, beret and turtleneck sweater.

Comic book shop/memorabilia owner and amateur philosopher Vern (Adrian Paul of Susan's Plan, The Void, Code Hunter, Tracker, Alien Tracker, Moscow Heat, Tides of War and Throttle) attempts to find meaning in life, its context, is it really straightforward and planned or does it simply revel in chaos? Vern begins to wax ideology and metaphysics with his customer Dennis (Brendan Fehr of The Foresaken, Roswell, Sugar, The Other Side of the Tracks, CSI: Miami, Samurai Girl and Bones) when a young girl walks in the shop idly browsing as one would believe. Heaven fore-fend girls liking graphic novels. Wracked with guilt and confusion of her mother's death in a car crash, Sara (Carly Pope of Dirt, YPF, Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon, 24 and Outlaw) finds scholastics to be dull and takes her away from her true love which is puzzles and riddles of the macabre or bizarre.

Transient, hobo or homicidal lunatic??

Vern and Sara seem to have a dynamic relationship of self-destruction, lawbreaking and more than a few misdemeanors between the two of them. Gifted minds that are not challenged enough and reprobates in their own mind against the rules, this pair of misfits test themselves and the boundaries of the system we all drift in. Games at first of course. Sara and Jeff's family ties are rocky at best, so much the good girl he wants to see in her but not realizing she needs her own life. Sara recieves an invitation to solving riddles of a different facet. Vern tells her that a local mystery occurs in vehicular accidents, random fires with no meaning or possibly even an unexplained murder. Are they truly without meaning? A elite petition is made to solve these puzzles but from where and by whom? Sara finds a student missing, dead and strung up and only because she interacted with him daily. How deep does this rabbit hole go?

Director/writer Jesse Warn goes for almost Michael Mann lighting style, close pan zooms on the actors to get as much expression, lots of hand held Mostly a techno/industrial soundtrack that gives the film a good steady pace but will not also lose the 30 second attention span crowd. The crane technique shots of the city, steady cam and some old school dolly track gives a nice eerie feeling to encompass the vibe of the film. I wasn't really pondering the riddles or reflective on the nothingness of being but found the film to at least be entertaining and the cast brought their "A" game to this whimsical view of life and all its "order".

Come hither stare?