Netflix Turns Up the "Heat" With Its Own "Power" in Hokey Crime Thriller "Nemesis"

"It features lines like a diamond thief saying to his boss, "Call me Sydney Sweeney, because these bitches are all-natural," or the lead thief telling his crew, "My name may be Coltrane, but I do not play that improvisational shit when it comes to jobs.""

""Nemesis" is deeply- deeply-indebted to Michael Mann's 1995 crime thriller "Heat." That's nothing new for crime stories, mind; "Crime 101" was practically a copy-and-paste, and that came out just a few months ago. But the spin here is that Kemp and Marole asked themselves, "What if we told another LA-set game of cat-and-mouse between a workaholic cop and an equally dogged criminal mastermind, but the protagonists were Black? And what if we told that story over eight melodramatic hours?""

"The beats and conventions of this kind of cops-and-robbers story are followed to a T, right down to both men losing themselves in the obsessions of their jobs. The cop in question is Detective Isaiah Stiles ("Abbott Elementary"'s Matthew Law), your classic loose cannon who breaks the rules but gets the job done; he's haunted, of course, by past failures, including guilt over the death of a trainee years ago at the hands of a gang of masked robbers he was pursuing."

"Thing is, he's right; the mastermind behind that heist is Coltrane Wilder ("The First Purge" lead Y'Lan Noel), a pillar of the community who moonlights as a master thief with a four-man crew. Between still grieving his wife Ebony"

Nemesis is a highly silly, melodramatic crime story featuring sharp, swaggering dialogue and exaggerated character behavior. The narrative draws heavily from Michael Mann’s Heat, using familiar cops-and-robbers conventions and an LA setting. The plot follows Detective Isaiah Stiles, a rule-breaking loose cannon haunted by past failures, including guilt tied to a trainee’s death during a masked robbery. Stiles believes the same gang is still active after a major poker-game heist. The mastermind behind the crime is Coltrane Wilder, a community pillar who moonlights as a master thief with a four-person crew. The rivalry intensifies through both men’s job-driven obsessions.

Read at Roger Ebert