Nemesis

If nothing else, director Albert Pyun's Nemesis perfectly simulates the experience of watching bubble-era anime, the type of self-contained shocker sold on video cassettes, after they've been chopped-up and dubbed with an English language track that just so happens to be packed with swear words. No-one seems to be speaking with their own voice; unusual accents and strange cadences are ascribed to recognisable supporting players like Brion James, who otherwise do very little to arrest attention. Plotting is similarly threadbare, Rebecca Charles' screenplay a convoluted back-and-forth between interchangeable factions of treacherous cyborgs as they muddle towards some objective or other. Olivier Gruner, a kickboxing silver medallist and a former Commados Marine in the French Navy, brings a steely detachment to his Alex Rain, a mostly human bounty hunter who jets around the world under the auspices of an unusually hegemonic LAPD. 

Gruner gets to wear his hair at a variety of lengths in Nemesis, from a messianic bob when imprisoned in a seafarer's stockade to a tousled corporate cut when he's on the job. The best of these snips being a close crop that Rain pairs with rounded sunglasses, prickling memories of RanXerox from Heavy Metal, while cooking on a stakeout in Baja. Incomprehensible in repose, Pyun's film bolts upright whenever a firearm is in play. Seemingly every shot in Nemesis' shoot-outs, no matter how fleeting the coverage, has the featured actor holding their finger down like their lives depended on it. Dilapidated buildings, where most of the film's action takes place, are completely shredded by this incessant gunfire. Pyun finding a frequency somewhere between the comedic excess of a Merrie Melodies cartoon and the histrionics of Hong Kong's heroic bloodshed movies. Henchmen load up on the kind of weaponry found adorning a Boeing Superfortress then march forwards, through walls, firing as they go. A cornered Rain is similarly struck by the malleability of surroundings, using his MP5K and a bottomless cache of ammo to blast several successive floors of his flophouse hideout to splinters.