Very disappointed :(

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Not-intellectual-in-a-slightest action movie, which also gives no cyberpunk vibes, it's rather a classic sci-fi thing about machines vs. humankind, and this one almost fully copies Terminator plot (good cyborgs help human rebels to stop other cyborgs from taking over the planet, they dropped the time travel though) and most likely was made after the success of Terminator 2 (they even brought the same visual effects specialist who made the cyborg in Nemesis to look and move exactly like in Cameron's movie). Although Terminator itself is nothing original, so I wouldn't say Nemesis would be a rip-off of it, but I think the success of the T2 movie and hype around cyborgs at the time played the role.First thing to notice in the movie is how everyone can't shoot properly at all, both "programmed to kill" cyborgs and "experienced" humans. They always miss the targets, even if they stand just about a meter away, it looks extremely ridiculous. But the movie gets even more ridiculous pretty quick when Shang Loo comes into the frame, becoming a unintentional comedy. Very serious poker-face men with black suits and black glasses chasing two humans and missing all the time even with some sort of a shotgun-grenade laucnher weapon (no sharpnel, no blast waves). One time this weapon shoots like it has nuclear bomb bullets, other time they're like the weakest grenades, whatever fits the action on the screen and keeps the heroes going. The way Alex returns the card from cyborg makes him look like a Mowgli, not to mention the way he shoots their pursuer from grenade launcher making a flip, it's just over the top. Truth to be said, they seem to embraced the ridiculousness they put on the screen, there's a funny scene when a granny kills a cyborg with a gun she had in her purse. The movie tries very hard to look COOL, watching this on VHS being a teenager back in a day probably was a blast. The actors do their job just fine for a movie like that, it's certainly not a disaster on the performance front. The editing is good, visual effects are great. The locations chosen for the movie are beautiful and they used very well, it's one of the strong feats of the movie. You'd recognize Brion James, who probably played in all b-movies out there, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who later became Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat, and Thomas Janes, who later became a great The Punisher. It was good to see them all here together.7.5/10 sashadarko.com

Olivier Gruner stars as Alex, a cop in the year 2027 who has had many body parts replaced with robotics after assorted scrapes. After retiring from the force, he's assigned by his old boss, Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) to apprehend a former partner, Jared (Marjorie Monaghan) who's smuggling data to a terrorist group. However, he will learn that things aren't as they seem; he'll come to not only question his identity but wonder where his loyalties lie. Compared to the other B movies of director Albert Pyun, this does deliver the goods when it comes to the action aspect. It gets down to business in record time, and soon enough there's plenty of gunfire and plenty of explosions. The special effects are for the most part pretty good. Only towards the end do they get rather laughable. Both the production design and the location shooting are excellent. Pyun and company really do create the sense of a world that's gone to hell. There's a strong accent on sex appeal, with many hot women in the cast (Deborah Shelton is particularly ravishing as Julian) and female *and* male nudity. This has also got one hell of a fun B movie cast, with a couple of familiar faces, some of them Pyun regulars. Some of the acting (and dialogue) are highly stylized, so enjoyment of both is likely to be a matter of taste. Gruner is likable in the lead, and contributing a standout performance is Merle Kennedy as guide Max Impact. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays "terrorist" leader Angie- Liv, Yuji Okumoto is a hotel proprietor, Nicholas Guest and a hilariously accented Brion James are Thomersons' colleagues, and Vincent Klyn and Thom Mathews play other baddies. Look for a young Thomas Jane (he's the provider of the male nudity) in a small part and Jackie Earle Haley in a cameo near the end as a technician. The main problem is the screenplay, by Rebecca Charles, which is rather muddled and Pyun has to work overtime to keep the audience interested in the characters and scenario. Thankfully, the movie does get better as it goes along and it culminates in one hell of a very funny and lively finish. The undemanding fan of low budget genre efforts such as this should find "Nemesis" agreeable if not remarkable or memorable. Six out of 10.

Alex (Olivier Gruner) is a cyborg working for the police against terrorists - he thinks. When he is told it actually is a fight of robots against human beings, he starts looking for proof. „Nemesis" apparently was successful enough to "inspire" three sequels, all directed by Albert Pyun, too, but starring Sue Price instead of Gruner. That doesn't mean it had a new recipe, though. „Nemesis" takes familiar elements from hits like „Terminator", „Robocop", „Escape From New York" (the time bomb!) etc. (all movies which spawned sequels themselves already) and thus creates an hour and a half of breathless action - in the first ten minutes, they spent as much ammo and fireworks as other movies during the whole running time. Simple, but it works. To be fair, there are tries to add a bit of depth when Alex wonders if he still can feel anything, whether he is able to decide what's wrong and what's right... and one wonderful joke scene when grandma takes a gun to shoot a cyborg and complains an old woman can't safely walk across the street anymore. But that's the occasional slowdowns you require for an action movie before you start the next gunfight. Action is what it is all about, I mean: what do you expect when the leading lady is named Max Impact (Merle Kennedy)? The special effects are much better than in the sequels. I watched the 4 Nemesis movies (which I watched first in the 1990s) again now in chronological order for my reviews and voted 7/7/5/5.

Don't be fooled by the box art that promises a gritty urban cyberpunk experience. Most of the film's running time takes place in Hawaii - standing in for a low tech, low life Javanese town called Shang Loo - so it looks a little too bright and airy to be cyberpunk to anyone familiar with William Gibson's 'Sprawl'. There are science fiction elements essential to the plot but science fiction fans looking for a tech thriller will be disappointed. This is a generic late 80's / early 90's actioner of a type which has thankfully gone out of style. Lots of explosions, karate fights and expended shell casings strung around a thin, mostly incoherent plot about intrigue in the cyborg population that takes the entire first half of the film to get going. The only compensation seems to be an abundance of stunning women in the cast. The producers must have been owed a favor by a modeling agency or something. Features a rare nude appearance by 1970 Miss USA Deborah Shelton, still looking very hot in her mid-40s, as Julian, a cyborg who has changed sides.