Omega Doom

After a nuclear war that desolated the planet, just robots and machines got to survive. Old and rusty, the group of cyborg usually gather themselves into gangs and the confronts are inevitable among them.When Omega Doom, a machine programmed to protect the innocent ones, arrives in the small villa and starts to help the place's oppressed inhabitants, he ends up provoking the hate of the villainous, and it doesn't take a lot of time for the hero and the evil robots to start a private, violent combat. Using the experiences and abilities acquired in the war, Omega Doom will do everything to help his friends and, by using his high capacity, he will put an end to the tyranny. A low-budget thriller directed by Albert Pyun, a film maker who is specialist in making science-fictions (Pyun is responsible for others interesting motion pictures, such as "Nemesis" and "Crazy Six"). The dark photography combines with the slow and pessimistic story's climate,but there is no action scene (this is a small bad aspect, but for those who like to see adventure moments' "Omega Doom" isn't a good choice), and Pyun substitutes the shootings and fights for surprising dialogues and discussions about pain, happiness and freedom.Even being tedious, there are qualities, as the exuberant visual that composes a frightening, lonely and violent image of the future, and the contained Rutger Hauer's performance.

In a dark and dismal world, Rutger has obviously found passage through a land of endless fatty food buffets. This movie was bad enough on its own, but add a nearly comical robot to be cut to pieces, a gun, a bunch of women borrowed from a Robert Palmer video set (and almost as active), and a waddling Rutger Hauer; what do you have? Something Troma would have refused to release on their Sex & Violence office webcam.

'Omega Doom' really does have a special place in my heart. As movies go, it's not the best. It isn't even good. But... well, just watch the thing. There's no way you can sit through the whole sci-fi/western/inexplicable noise-packed experience without either beginning to love it or snapping and attacking bystanders with the remote.

It's less of a movie and more of a game, to be honest. See how long *you* can stand the bizarre whirring sounds, played whenever each and every 'robotic' (translated from Low-Budget: contact lenses and metal gloves) character moves. Even when their eyes move, for god's sake! It's half endurance test, and half bad, bad movie. But watch it anyway.

This looks like its going to be an exceptionally dull sci-fi, with Rutger Hauer, looking like some kind of Russian WW2 soldier, playing a renegade android in a post-apocalyptic landscape - a setting which allows for no expensive effects, just a derelict, rubble-strewn building site.

'Omega Doom' is still dull, but when after 20 minutes or so, you realise that the story is a Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars remake, the film starts to have some minor points of interest.

With no real sci-fi elements - a bloke with shaven bits in his hair, metal gloves and blue contact lenses doesn't totally convince as a fully-fledged android - the film leans towards its Western roots, with two rival gangs holed up on either side of the street and a saloon where Rutger Hauer muses with the friendly female bartender, before playing off the opposing gangs. Hauer fits into the role as the impassive stranger well, accompanied by a spaghetti western guitar theme building up the tension to the inevitable showdowns, which are settled in the classic Western tradition - Omega Doom has a quick draw Shane would be proud of.

Although I quite enjoyed these areas, they couldn't cloud the fact that 'Omega Doom' is boring and derivative, not demonstrating any particular areas of ability on the part of its cast or crew, apart from Hauer who is OK despite being on auto-pilot - but then he is a class actor who, for some reason, prefers to ply his trade in these bargain-basement efforts.

With an annoying whirring noise which accompanies each androids move, and a tiresome 'head' character providing Hauer with his sidekick, there is nothing here for even the most easily satisfied sci-fi viewer. Kurosawa and Leone fans will find enough points of reference to make this interesting, but only in the same way that 'Jaws' fans enjoy 'Orca' or 'Grizzly.

Albert Pyun is really underrated. This guy deserves more attention on how bad he is. Bad as a director and writer, a couple of years ago I already declared him the Ed Wood of modern movie making. Sad thing about directors like Pyun is that they have no talent for movie-making but keep on making movies nevertheless.

Reason why I watched this movie in the first place is because Rutger Hauer is in it. It's too bad that he is given awful material to work with, the script has some terrible dialogs.

Still I can appreciate a big fat B-movie every now and then. B-movie's are always ridicules and awfully looking with terrible acting. In a way its always very relaxing to watch after a hard week of work. This movie is no exception. Fans of the genre and I know that there are a lot of those, will enjoy this movie big time. It has all the typical modern science-fiction B-movie elements in it.

The special effects are laughable bad at times, especially for the character Head. The sound effects also made me laugh. Remember that Cain droid from "Robocop 2"? Remember that sound that he made when he walked? It's a kind of scary sound for Cain but a laughable sound when it is used for just normal human looking droid characters in this movie. It's really not fitting.

Don't stop making crap Pyun! In a way I always enjoy it.

...I kind of like the cover though.

4/10

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