Netflix Turns “Heat” On With Its “Power” On Hokey Crime Thriller “Nemesis”
The first thing you need to know about “Nemesis,” the latest from “Power” creator Courtney A. Kemp and co-star Tani Marole, is that it’s deeply silly. It contains lines like the diamond thief who says to his boss, “Call me Sydney Sweeney, because these animals are natural,” or the lead thief who tells his employees, “My name may be Coltrane, but I don’t play that improvised dirt when it comes to jobs.”
The second thing you should know is that “Nemesis” is deep—seriously—credited to Michael Mann’s 1995 crime thriller “Heat.” That’s nothing new in crime stories, mind; “Crime 101” was copy-and-paste, and it came out a few months ago. But the spin here is that Kemp and Marole asked themselves, “What if we told another LA cat-and-mouse game between a career cop and a criminal mastermind, but the main characters were black? And what if we told that story for 8 good hours?”
That over-the-top is in the DNA of “Nemesis”, and it’s bound to delight and frustrate in equal measure. The rhythms and conventions of this kind of cops-and-robbers story are followed to a T, right down to both men losing themselves in the obsession 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 is haunted by past failures, including guilt over the death of a former trainee years ago at the hands of a group of masked robbers he was chasing. He’s sure the team is still active, and it’s the one that just got a big job in high-level poker.
The thing is, you’re right; the mastermind behind that heist is Coltrane Wilder (“The First Purge” lead Y’Lan Noel), a pillar of society who moonlights as a master thief with a gang of four. Between grieving the miscarriage of his wife Ebony (Cleopatra Coleman), and one of his henchmen, Deon (Quincy Isaiah), slipping and getting in over his head (think Kilmer, “Heat”), ‘Trane is looking for a way out. That means pulling in fewer “last big jobs” and faster. That leaves little time for Stiles to take him out on the nose, especially since he figures out early that ‘Trane is behind it all. He has no evidence, and a team of police officers (some of whom—Domenick Lombardozzi, Michael Potts, Chris Bauer—are “The Wire” scholars) warn him nauseously of the consequences of his obsession with his job and the force.
For the most part, “Nemesis” plays off all these conventions in a derivative way, with little twists given the show’s bona fides (“The Powers” was similarly silly, though the dialogue is especially earmarked here; “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but cash is for old women,” after all). Sadly, its shaggiest episodes also happen to be the ones directed by Mario Van Peebles, who has to contend with all the table setting that needs to happen before the really bad things happen. There’s fun developing in his hours: Coltrane walks into a poker game dressed almost exactly like Nino Brown in “New Jack City” (which Van Peebles also directed and starred in), and a jewel thief later starts a gang wearing a diamond-encrusted mask, which is cool. But the real thrills make up the thankless work that Van Peebles’ episodes have to do.
As the series progresses, it becomes easier to depend on its control, especially since our heroes on both sides of the law have their personal lives closely intertwined with their business. Most refreshing is the way their wives play in the action, albeit in subtle ways; of course Ebony becomes close friends with Stiles’ wife, Candace (Gabrielle Dennis’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show”), and they slowly begin to mend their friendship to get her husband off Coltrane’s trail. The twists and turns don’t stop there: For course Stiles’ estranged father, Amos (Moe Irvin), is a notorious LA gangster so bloodthirsty that his nickname is “Nightmare.” Of course Coltrane’s criminal fixer is the girl’s sister-in-law, Charlie (Sophina Brown), who walks around in clothes so extravagant and shoulder pads that pigeons can’t sit on. The more mustard the creators put into this particular dog, the more you have to accept the taste.
However, it’s not all fair, as the latest episodes really show off the location shooting set in Century City with some impressively staged episodes. Law and Noel may not get much of a chance to separate themselves from each other (Law, in particular, loses his sauce with his devil-may-care cop, to the point where you’re not really rooting for him), but they acquit themselves well with a gun. And don’t worry, we get the requisite machine gun battle down a busy freeway with hockey masked thugs, just in case you forgot how much “Burn” credit this thing has.
To enjoy “Nemesis” requires a great tolerance for cheese, and a longing for the kinds of dirty Black crime dramas we got in the 1990s: “Put It Off,” “New Jack City,” “Belly.” It would be foolish to say that this equates to those; as much as I’d like more room for this big ensemble to grow, the hour-long running times mean that the scenes and the slow pace drag a lot, especially in the middle. But when it does appear, it’s exciting, and your patience will be rewarded in the end. It’s closer to “Den of Thieves” than “The Heat” for fun, but if you’re tired of re-watching those, it’ll do.
The full season was screened for review. It is currently streaming on Netflix.
