Archenemy (2020)

Directed by: Adam Egypt Mortimer | 90 minutes | action, adventure | Actors: Joe Manganiello, Skylan Brooks, Jessica Allain, Luis Kelly-Duarte, Mac Brandt, Kieran Gallagher, Zolee Griggs, Christopher Guyton, Glenn Howerton, Jeremy Hawkins, Joseph D. Reitman, Paul Scheer, Amy Seimetz

To get straight to the point, ‘Archenemy’ is not a product the film industry can or should be proud of. Director Adam Egypt Mortimer thought he could get away with a bit of comic book animation from the 80s and a completely absurd story. Unfortunately! If only protagonist Joe Manganiello (Max Fist) had smashed his fist on the table hard, the ridiculous script and the completely empty/flat characters might have been ‘super’ well polished in time.

Now we have to deal with a superhero, Fist, who fell to Earth from another world (Chromium). Literally, because Max is a fallen hero, a homeless person who drowns in whiskey in the pub against payment for his ‘story’.

Wannabe investigative journalist/skater Hamster (Skylan Brooks) is intrigued and wants to know the whole story, mainly to score clicks on a website. And so Max starts talking. About an 11-dimensional space, about his nemesis Cleo Ventrik (Amy Seimetz from ‘Alien: Covenant’ and ‘Pet Sematary’) and her ‘weapon of mass destruction’ called The Void Machine and about the cosmic source from which Max got his powers. .

Meanwhile, Hamster’s sister, Indigo (Zolee Griggs), gets an assignment from the drug dealer she does odd jobs for. On his behalf, The Manager (Glenn Howerton), she has to collect $300,000 from psychopath Krieg (Paul Scheer from ‘Long Shot’). Things don’t go quite according to plan and before the trio know it, they find themselves in the middle of drug-related skirmishes. The only question is, do they run from it or fight back? To ask the question is to answer it. So, after some hassle and a few inevitable deaths, there’s the apotheosis: the long-awaited duel between nemesis and ex-lovers Max and Cleo. Oh wait: there’s still a funny ending to it. Seeing is believing, but not seeing is perhaps much better. How blue cosmic blood can make you blue. Please, ignore this B-movie attempt. Apparently Nicolas Cage was in the running to play hero Max Fist. It says a lot that even he didn’t want to burn his hands on this…