Review of Omega Doom (1996) by Explodingboy1989 — 22 Mar 2009

Starring Rutger Hauer, 'Omega Doom' is one of the few halfway decent outings from "one of the most vituperated directors of all time" Albert Pyun. This movie is pure Pyun too; it has all the usual suspects and reeks of Pyun's MO: obnoxious, wise-cracking female cyborgs, dystopian/post-apocalyptic landscapes, and a highly eroticized cyber punk sensibility melded with inpenetrable but engaging themes (man, machine, hope, despondence). It has all the ingredients that made his most successful films (Cyborg, Nemesis) work.

Rutger Hauer is the lead character, Omega Doom/Guardian Angel, a cyborg programmed to kill humans, but is shot in the head in a bloody war at the beginning, loses his memory, and now is awol in some ghost town and gets into all sorts of Yojimbo/Last Man Standing hi-jinks. I was a big fan of Hauer growing up- stuff like 'Split Second,' Wanted' and, of course, 'the Hitcher,' were off-the-chain and I ate his output up with a spoon. He's pretty good here, and doesn't seem to mail it in at all.

The secondary character aren't too memorable- we have, as mentioned previously, the wise-cracking cyborg chicks (which reminded me of the cyborg chicks in Nemesis)- they engage in more talk than action, exchange a few cold, sardonic quips, and get dealt with accordingly by Hauer at the end. There's another dude at the beginning who has these bad, blue contacts like Vincent Klynn in 'Cyborg.' There's also a "head," a cyborg getting kicked around by the baddies in the town and always seems to lose his body. He was more annoying than anything else, and the special effects for his head were total bad sci fi DTV.

This movie is like most of Pyun's movies- overly short, high on inane dialog, and taking place on maybe three or four sets tops. I guess a good amount of action happened, but like many of Pyun's films, you feel almost like nothing happened. This movie shares many kinships with the dystopian themes of 'Cyborg' and Pyun's best realized work 'Nemesis,' but there doesn't seem to be too much room to explore them here because everybody spends half the movie talking or waiting for the ten minute spagetti western guitar theme to stop before they draw on each other. It's obvious watching this that Pyun was heavily influenced by Sergio Leon in the feel and way he sets up the exposition and action, and I can't say it was a total failure. He pulls it off quite well, but again, the movie is just too short.

I am a fan of this because I saw it back in the day, but I watched it again recently with 'Nemesis' and Cyborg and found that it lacks 'Nemesis'' substance, and the drive-in fun of 'Cyborg.' Nonetheless, there are worse movies you could be watching (like Good Luck Chuck).