“Nemesis”, the new Sylvester Stallone movie that is number one on Prime Video

Sylvester Stallone, born in 1946 in New York, has long been a film legend. We all know that he is Rocky and also Rambo. With that he is already one of the most popular artists out there. But his filmography is much more. He has tried various genres, including comedy, science fiction, drama, and crime. Already a veteran, he dares to play a rather ambiguous superhero, already retired, tired and of few words. Joe lives in a poor neighborhood, works as a garbage collector and does his daily routine without messing with anyone. What he hides in his present or in his past, no one can find out.

The prologue of the film shows a battle waged between two brothers twenty years ago in Granite City. One of them, the hero, and another dead, the villain, emerged victorious from that fight. After that, the hero was never seen again. Years passed and the city sank into despair and violence. The situation gets even worse when a young criminal regains the villain’s power and decides to go out and control the streets of Granite. In parallel, a 13-year-old adolescent boy, Sam, spends hardships with his widowed mother, but also dreams of following the trail of the hero, because he believes that he is still on the streets. When Joe saves him from some bullies, Sam begins to believe that the hero has returned.

We know the answer, or at least part of it, and we watch, hopefully, as old Joe begins to compromise, he doesn’t have much of a choice, though staying on the sidelines might have been one of them. In the relationship between child and hero, the film has distant echoes of Hawka Stallone hit from decades ago, but many have also seen a connection to the protégé (2000) the film of M.Night Shyamalan with Bruce Willis.

What is very clear is that those action heroes of the eighties that dominated the box office, today have been replaced by superheroes. And if you can’t beat him, join them. Stallone did not want to be left out and after several secondary roles in the genre, he decided to have the leading role of him. The actor has been able to adapt to each stage of his career and also to his age, so he has looked for roles that mark that passage of time.

As for the film, it must be said that it works better with the script than with the way it is filmed. The story is very good but the movie lacks panache. It is very reminiscent of the films of the nineties where an action movie star could team up with a brave boy and both would challenge the bad guys. Stallone might have shone in this character some twenty years ago, but here he is seen acting with a lot of energy albeit with little confidence in his ability to convey what the character should be. Some sparks of good action are not enough to make a difference, although they are still good times. The whole idea of ​​the retired hero who has to get back on track is fine and it’s at the very heart of the story. It could have been even better, but you can see that there were also production limitations, as well as very common ideas to capture the script in images. Stallone, at any age, is an actor who fills any screen. His charisma is intact and he justifies the vision of Nemesis.

Nemesis Is available in Prime Video.

: