Bullet Points: I Am Omega
As a big Mark Dacascos fan I have seen him battle a wide variety of foes over the years. I am talking about everything from aliens to cyborgs to a drug lord that was also a Capoeira master .
Now after watching 2006’s I Am Omega, I can add zombies to the list of Mark Dacascos foes…
- Nightmare Fuel: The movie begins with a mother frantically packing a suitcase as her bewildered young son looks on. The two frantically exit their home and head to the car… once inside the mother realize she doesn’t have the keys. She tells her son to stay inside the car and as soon as she exits the vehicle to go retrieve the keys she is attacked by a zombie. The woman’s maternal instincts kick in and she immediately fights off the zombie in an attempt to protect her son… she doesn’t fight for long. Then the son does what his mother told him not to do and exits the vehicle, as soon as he steps outside a zombie hiding under the car grabs his legs and that’s when Renchard (Mark Dacascos, Only the Strong) wakes up from his nightmare, but then an alarm sounds and the security lights outside Renchard’s home kick on and we soon find out that zombies are a very real problem for Renchard.
- One Man Show: Renchard puts on his boots, throws on a robe, grabs his gun and machete and heads outside… and there we get to see Renchard in action as he takes out multiple zombies using his weapons and a zombie trap that he has built in his yard. When Renchard is done he stacks up the bodies and burns them… Once Renchard gets back inside we find out that zombies aren’t the only thing he is battling, he’s also battling the madness that comes along with being presumably the last man alive… Then the next morning we get a day in the life of Renchard… he has a mannequin that sits at his dining room table to keep him company, he even has a time clock in his home that he punches before going out to do his work, which involves planting explosives at key points on the outskirts of Los Angeles. All of his explosives are on a timer, with the end goal being to blow up downtown Los Angeles and more importantly the hive of zombies that now reside there. I would not have expected that one of Mark Dacascos’ most challenging roles as an actor would have come from a movie produced by The Asylum, but that’s exactly what happened… Dacascos is fantastic as a man trying to keep some sense of normalcy in a world that is anything but.
- He Is Not Alone: One evening while having dinner, Renchard gets an incoming video message on his laptop… he ignores it at first, perhaps thinking it was not real, eventually he clicks accept and that is when he meets Brianna… After freaking out and falling out of his chair, Brianna tells Renchard about a place in the mountains called Antioch, where there is a whole colony of uninfected humans. She needs to get there, but she is stuck in downtown Los Angeles and asks for his help… a once again freaked out Renchard slams his laptop shut. Obviously he doesn’t want to help, but soon he’ll have no choice… the next day Renchard is visited by two men who say they are from Antioch (Vincent and Mike). Vincent tells Renchard that that they picked up Renchard’s transmission with Brianna from the night before. Apparently they have been monitoring Renchard for some time and know he knows how to navigate the city’s sewer system so they recruit him to help them get Brianna, who apparently is immune to zombie attacks and her blood can help create a serum that could save all of mankind… That makes Renchard pause for a moment, but again he refuses, so Vincent and Mike blow up his house which was the first indication that these two may not be on the up and up. I should note that Vincent was played by Geoff Mead, who co-starred with Dacascos in The Redemption: Kickboxer 5. Mead was also one of the writers for the movie.
- Walking Dead in LA: It isn’t long into their subterranean journey that Mike becomes a victim of a zombie attack… although Vincent isn’t willing to let his buddy go… Renchard and Vincent are separated and Renchard assumes that Vincent met a similar fate to Mike. Eventually Renchard finds Brianna hold up in an old fish store and the two have to fight their way out as. Realizing they’ll never make it on foot, the two end up in one of the most dangerous places in action movies… a parking garage! A parking garage that is even more dangerous than your typical action movie parking garage since there are zombies in it! This would set up my favorite scene in the entire movie with Renchard using nunchaku to battle the zombies!!!
- Raising the Stakes: In addition to needing to flee the zombies, Renchard realizes the bombs he planted will be going off in less than 24 hours, so they need to be as far away from downtown Los Angeles as possible. And if all that wasn’t enough… they find out Vincent isn’t dead and that he isn’t from Antioch. Vincent loves what the world has become and doesn’t want to see Brianna save it… which means we get ourselves a big Renchard and Vincent final battle with the future of the world at stake!
It is easy to write off the mockbusters of The Asylum as pure movie trash but I was pleasantly surprised with I Am Omega (which was obviously made to get a jump on I Am Legend starring Will Smith). As a big Mark Dacascos fan, my opinion may be a bit skewed but this is an Asylum production I would actually recommend, especially to fellow Mark Dacascos loyalists.
I am not only a Mark Dacascos loyalist, but a Bonus Bullet Points loyalist too…
- World Record: I Am Omega has to hold the record for the most times “compadre” was said in a single movie and every “compadre” was said by Vincent.
- Drunken Quote: “I’m pissing on you world!” – Renchard
- Montage Alert: We get a combination training/flashback montage with Renchard doing a kata in his backyard while also remembering the happy pre-zombie times with his wife and son.
