Movie Review: DOA: Dead or Alive

Forged from the remains of the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter franchises DOA was born. It is a series of fighting games, the is known as much for its fighting as it is for the over-enhanced, gravity defying female characters than for any story that is in desperate need of being told. The girls of DOA were so popular that it spawned another game, one centering on the bikini clad fighters leaving the fighting arenas and heading to the beach for a round or two of bouncy volleyball. Well, now the fighting, the girls, and the volleyball have been adapted to the big screen for a movie. A movie that is sure to send critics into epileptic fits should they attempt to sit through it, leave fans frothing at the mouth that their beloved characters have been so disrespected, leaving a smallish group, with me as a member that will smile at just how bad it is and simply enjoy it as cinematic diversion from the big budget disappointments that seem to come out each summer.

I have only a small amount of experience with the series, only having spent time with the fourth version that made its debut on the Xbox 360. I quickly fell in love with the game, leaving with the impression that it was one of the best fighting games that this non-gamer has ever played. Now that the movie is here, I would have much rather played the game for 90 minutes, but there was something that is undeniably attention grabbing about the movie. I don't know if it was the plethora of toned female bodies, the terrible acting, the bad dialogue, the silly effects, or the nonsensical way in which everything goes down, but I found myself enjoying the heck out of the movie despite recognizing just how pointless it was.

The movie does not have much of a plot, but such as it is, it does seem to follow the game pretty closely, or so I would imagine. Fighting games have never been known for their deep, complex, and intriguing stories. You will generally have a combination of thin threads like someone looking for a family member lost in the prior years tournament, someone who just wants to fight, someone runninng from their past, and someone looking to take down the guy running the tournament. The tourney mastermind is always some sort of evil genius with some crazy plot to get money, world power, or something along those lines. There really is nothing groundbreaking about the stories, they are all related to the fighting game standards and cliches.

DOA: Dead or Alive opens with the introduction to three of the primary characters. Princess Kasumi (Sin City and DEBs Devon Aoki), who wishes to find her brother, thought to be killed in DOA, she leaves her clan, despite knowing it will result in her being declared a shinobi and an assassin sent to eliminate her. The assassin is the purple haired Ayane (Natassia Malthe), who makes a few appearances throughout the film. Tina Armstrong (My Name is Earl's Jaime Pressley) is an ex-wrestler looking to prove herself in real combat, she is joined by her father, Bass (pro-wrestler Kevin Nash). Finally we meet Christy (Holly Valance), a master thief who enters the tournament looking for a big payday. On the island where DOA is held we meet the final of the four primary females, Helena (Shark's Sarah Carter), daughter of DOA's deceased founder. Other characters include Bayman, who is nothing more than a henchman, Gen Fu who fulfils the requirement of an aged, white haired martial arts master, and Zack, a cocky ladies man who likes to think more highly of himself than he should. There are others, but most are just there as window dressing to the primaries.

Also on the island is Donovan, played by Eric Roberts with a rat tail. Donovan is the evil mastermind behind the tournament. The tournament had originally been formed by Helena's father as a genuine competition, however, Donovan saw it as a way to do some weapons research that he could turn around and sell to world powers. He is definitely not a nice guy, and he has ulterior motives for discovering who the best of the best of the contestants is.

Wow, trying to buy into the story will make your head hurt. It is not hard to understand, and it is told in a pretty straight forward manner, but it is dealt with in such a shallow manner that it makes you wonder if any of the characters have a brain. The easy answer is no, they only have what the script allows them to have, and the script might as well have been snagged directly from the games for all of the subtlety it contains. Despite this, I still found myself enjoying the heck out of the foolishness playing out in front of me. They even managed to work in some bikini volleyball into the plot. Gratuitous, definitely, but still a welcome site.

I think what made this awful movie so watchable is the lack of pretension. It is a movie that new what it was and that is all that it aimed to be. It was not trying to be the next big thing, it was not trying to inject any deep philosophical thought into story, nor were they trying to create multi-layered characters that would remain with you for any great period of time. It was a movie with a bunch of silly fights, some attractive young actresses in bikinis fighting, and that is pretty much it.

Corey Yuen directed the film, and does a bring a certain visual flair to movie. He is a veteran Hong Kong action director who made his English language debut with The Transporter (a vastly superior film to this). The fights are not real world believable, but as fights brought out of the digital world and into a live action facismile, it looks pretty good. Granted, there are only a couple of one on one fights, but they are pretty fun. There is the Kasumi against Ayane in a bamboo forest, Christy versus Helena in bikinis in the rain, and Tina taking on Zack as the main one on ones. There are also numerous fights with faceless henchmen and quick one on ones with other characters, like Tina and Bass.

Bottomline. I hate to say this is good when you shut your brain down, but it is pretty much true here. There is nothing to really recommend seeing this for. There are a number of attractive ladies, some decent wire-fu fights, and a style that was brought right out of the game to the big screen. I had fun, but I suspect that most will not. This is a very bad, very dumb action picture that you can have fun with in the right frame of mind.

Mildly Recommended.