'ARCHENEMY' : Tuesday 15th December 2020.

'ARCHENEMY' which I saw this week is an MA15+ Rated film Directed and Written by Adam Egypt Mortimer, whose prior movie making outings take in 2015's 'Some Kind of Hate' and 2019's 'Daniel Isn't Real'. Here he brings us this independent superhero mystery thriller offering co-written with Lucas Passmore, that was released Stateside and in Australia last week, has garnered generally mixed or average Reviews and has grossed US$56K thus far at the Box Office. The film saw its World Premier screening at the Los Angeles Beyond Fest film festival in early October.  

The film opens up with an anime back story in which our lead character introduces himself in voice-over, how he was a hero in another world known as Chromium in a different dimension, how he was powered by 'cosmic blood' and how he came to fall into our world through a vortex between 'space and time' when Chromium was threatened by a Supervillainess called Cleo who had developed a planet destroying weapon called Void. Now, having landed very unceremoniously on our little rock he is a down and out street bum, sleeping under bridges and is no longer in possession of the superpowers he once had on his home world. He drinks heavily, very heavily, raids garbage bins for scraps of food, recalls his stories of derring do back on Chromium to anyone who will listen and buy him a shot of whisky, and punches walls with his bare fists. And this is where our lost Superhero is given the moniker Max Fist (Joe Manganiello, who also Co-Produces here together with Elijah Wood) by Hamster (Skylan Brooks) a street smart young orphaned kid who rides a skateboard and films the local colour and identities on his smartphone in the hope of selling his short stories to the local website media channel, called Trendible.

Enter Indigo (Zolee Griggs) who is the older sister to Hamster whose also street smart and has been selling drugs on behalf of the local crime boss known only as The Manager (Glenn Howerton) and who tries to ingratiate herself to her boss by suggesting that they should go 'viral' on a national scale instead of just being reliant on small time local business. Hamster meanwhile seems to have adopted Max, and also appears to be the only person around town who takes his tales of other worldly exploits, adventures and battles with any degree of seriousness, while at the same time recording him to feed his journalistic aspirations. 

When Indigo is sent on an errand by The Manager to retrieve some monies from a small time drug dealer Krieg (Paul Scheer), it ends up with the pair playing Russian Roulette and the heavily tattooed red Speedo wearing Krieg blowing his own brains out with the single bullet in the chamber of his six shooter pistol. This leaves Indigo the chance to hot foot it outtta Dodge with the stash of cash and claiming that she was never there in the first place when questioned by The Manager and his goons. Of course those goons, Finn (Joseph D. Reitman) and Decker (Mac Brandt) quickly track down Indigo to her apartment and question her, just as Hamster arrives. Things begin to get heavy and with their lives on the line for betraying The Manager, after Finn found the stash of cash hidden in the bathroom, in bursts Max to save the day and kill both goons in the process. 

This sets in motion a war between The Manager and his henchmen and Max Fist who swears to protect Indigo and Hamster and 'annihilate' The Manager. And go to war he does, having suited and booted up with weapons aplenty and a bullet proof riot shield he first takes down six goons having interrupted their mid-week game of poker in the basement of The Manager's hideaway. On his way to track down The Manager Max confronts another goon who gains the upper hand until he is shot dead by Indigo. The Manager meanwhile has made his escape in a waiting car. At this point Hamster interjects with his general level of displeasure over all the killings, and with Indigo they leave town wanting nothing more to do with Max. Driving through the night, Indigo needs to catch some shut eye so they pull over to the side of the road so that she can sleep. Meanwhile, Hamster receives a call from his contact at Trendible, Melissa (Jessica Allain) who says that her boss wants to meet him given his success with reporting on Max Fist. She pulls up almost immediately having tracked him down using his smart phone, and ushers him into her vehicle.

It is revealed that The Manager's boss is in fact Cleo (Amy Seimetz) who landed on Earth from Chromium four years ago and has spent the intervening years building up a vast operation specialising in various nefarious deeds and underworld activities. Cleo is the one who was waiting in the car to pick up The Manager when he fled the scene the previous evening, and Cleo is the one whom Max believes he killed back on Chromium. As Melissa delivers Hamster to Cleo, she is shot dead. Hamster is then taken up to a high level office in a tower block by The Manager and Cleo to await the arrival of Max, who had given Hamster a tracking device which Cleo had activated. 

Upon arrival The Manager has Hamster at gunpoint. Max is forced to put down his weapon, while Cleo and he get reacquainted and reminisce about the good old days in a parallel universe. Cleo sees Indigo arrive and orders The Manager to go off and kill her. The pair have a gunfight in the foyer with ultimately Indigo gaining the upper hand and strangling her foe with her belt, but not before she had unloaded a bullet into his stomach, and he had stabbed her in the side with a knife. 

Meanwhile, while kneeling on the floor Cleo shoots Max in the upper chest, and then unloads another round into him. Caught unawares, Max rises to his feet and rushes towards Cleo sending them both crashing through a window to the concrete several stories below. Hamster looks down from the office above while Cleo crawls, bloodied, to aid Max in his dying breaths. Cleo is surrounded by a pool of red blood, but Max's blood is blue. When Cleo touches the pool of blue blood something powerful transfers from Max's body to her own and healing her knife wound she begins to levitate skywards. 

This film won't be for everyone and if your looking for something akin to an MCU and DCEU offering then you're gonna be surely disappointed, but if you're looking for a sub-genre punk-rock Superhero movie filmed on a shoestring budget compared to those aforementioned Hollywood blockbusters then this film might just float your boat. The anime sequences that pepper the storyline throughout the film reaffirming Max's background are well realised in all their neon blues and pinks and help elevate the story from being an also-ran. Joe Manganiello puts in a compelling performance as the fractured world weary fish outta water former other worldly hero trying to find his place in our world prone to random and calculated acts of extreme violence. In the final scene, when the whole premise of the movie is supposed to come together I was left wanting in the action stakes and a number of questions satisfactorily answered, but regrettably I got neither, except the set up for a possible sequel. 

'Archenemy' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard out of a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-