Nemesis (film) - Plot

Plot

Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) is a disillusioned police assassin. During a mission for the futuristic LAPD, he battles several freedom fighters from a group known as The Red Army Hammerheads, attempting to smuggle information through a courier cyborg. Nearly killed by the surviving leader, Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti), Alex denies her assertion that he is a mindless robot: "Eighty-six point five percent is still human."

After extensive rebuilding, he tracks Rosaria to Old Baja and kills her. After this his handlers arrive, led by his former lover Jared (Marjorie Monaghan), who is an android. Alex decides he has had enough and leaves the LAPD, becoming a freelance hustler and triggerman doing odd jobs in the underworld. However, his LAPD bosses are just letting him run free for a while. His old boss Commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) has him ambushed and kidnapped.

They bring him back for one last mission: to find his ex-lover Jared. According to the smug and pompous Germaine (Nicholas Guest) she has stolen vital security information of an upcoming international summit and must be stopped before she leaks the plans to his old adversaries, the Red Army Hammerheads. Commissioner Farnsworth's lieutenant, Maritz (Brion James) tells him she has escaped to a remote island in the Pacific. Alex is uninterested, even when Germaine shoves a pistol in his face, coolly warning him: "Pull it and you better use it," before easily disarming and knocking him senseless.

The assignment is actually a trick, and the freedom fighters are not fighting against government control of people's lives, but for humanity’s future. A new design of android is infiltrating the high elements of human society, copying the minds of powerful leaders into synthetic bodies, completely loyal to the cyborg cause. Farnsworth is among them.

Alex has added incentive when they reveal to him a bomb was implanted in his heart during his latest series of repairs. He has no choice but to find Jared, who is planning to meet with the leader of the Hammerheads, Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). After flying to the island of Shang-Lu along the Pacific Rim, he is turned loose as bait for Jared.

Burnt out, Alex halfheartedly begins his search, checking into a local hotel. He is soon intercepted by Julian (Deborah Shelton), a cyborg fronting for Jared. She tells him he is being shadowed by an LAPD strike team led by Farnsworth himself, waiting for the opportunity to hit the Hammerheads and Jared.

It turns out that Jared was fatally wounded in her escape from LA, requiring her memory core to be salvaged from her body. After removing a surveillance device implanted in Alex's eye, Julian injects his arm with a digital scrambler that will prevent the bomb from being remotely detonated. She gives him Jared's memory core, enabling him to talk to her. The strike team storms the hotel and Julian sacrifices herself to allow Alex to escape. Alex eventually joins forces with a young local woman, Max Impact (Merle Kennedy) who acts a scout for the Hammerheads under the cover of being a tour guide.

She is also the sister of Rosaria, the woman he killed in Old Baja, and wants Alex dead. He is brought to the Hammerheads and decides to join their cause. Unfortunately the strike team has tracked them down, leading to another shootout and chase through the rundown city and jungle. Most of the Hammerheads, including Angie-Liv, are killed by Farnsworth's men. During the escape Alex saves Max, eventually earning her forgiveness. In a confrontation with Farnsworth, Alex shoots him with a grenade launcher.

Alex and Max arrive at a secret hangar where Yoshiro (Yuji Okumoto), a Hammerhead masquerading as the quirky hotel manager, is waiting. While launching their escape vehicle, an aerodyne, the cyborg Farnsworth, alive but reduced to his mechanical endoskeleton, attacks. Alex fights and defeats him, in the process realizing just how much of him is cybernetically enhanced.

Alex brings Jared to another Hammerhead compound where they will be able to locate and destroy the labs that are being used to duplicate people. Unfortunately this means stripping her memory, in effect killing her. Heavily bandaged and temporarily blind, Alex is forced to say goodbye.

Sneaking into LA and hunting down the synthetic agents, Alex corners Germaine on the helipad of LAPD headquarters. Shooting him down, Alex recalls his previous quip: "See Germaine, when I pull it, I use it."

Before she died, Jared told him the real Commissioner Farnsworth left him a letter at an old dead drop. In it, his former mentor apologizes for his sometimes rough treatment of him, reminding him that they all have to do what is right regardless. Alex knows only he can stop the cyborgs in their plans.

Alex walks off with Max, now his partner, and they joke about how they are going to smuggle his synthetic body through airport customs: "Piece by piece, Max..."