Sunday Night Movie Review

In the interests of light entertainment this afternoon, I went and saw "DOA: Dead or Alive" at the movies. There weren't too many other options (school holidays seemed to have brought out half a dozen kids animated movies about animals...), but we passed up "Nacho Libre", which may or may not be good (I suspect the trailer has the best scenes), to go for trashy.

In case anyone doesn't know, "Dead or Alive" is a console-based fighting game, including competitors such as ludicrously proportioned and costumed girls, big, hulking macho guys and the obligatory old school martial arts experts. Each character has a different fighting skill set, from martial arts to wrestling and just plain brawling. There is a crazy Japanese story behind all the fighting but... well, all I remember is that it gets pretty convoluted - evil corporations, fighting tournaments, enemies, friends, brothers, sisters etc etc.

The movie takes a number of aspects of the game and shifts them to the big screen. The basic premise of the movie is that a number of talented fighters have been invited to a tropical island to participate in an elimination style tournament to find the "best" fighter, and to win $10 million. The films starts out introducing a number of the female characters, who are really the main stars of the film, and proving their combat expertise... Jaime Pressly, Holly Valance and Devon Aoki among them. Yep, big names. We then move to the island, and get introduce to assorted background characters and fighters as the tournament begins. I won't try to follow the plot, it goes a bit all over the place, but suffice to say, you know you are in for an in-depth portrayal of a villain once Eric Roberts walks on to the screen.

Despite the fact that this film sounds like rubbish, it was actually surprisingly entertaining. There were heaps of fight sequences, and although they often utilised wire work and similar techniques seen in a number of martial arts films over the last half dozen years, the fights were actually quite well done and looked (somewhat) realistic i.e. you could actually see the actors punching and kicking, rather than just rapid editing during the action. For all the young boys and geeks out there (maybe I qualify here?), there were some rather gratuitous shots of the girls in assorted skimpy outfits or bikinis, including a very necessary beach volleyball game (referencing another game in the DOA world, which is based on volleyball).

So yeah, I kinda liked this movie. And not just for the eye candy. Considering my last computer game to movie conversion was "Bloodrayne", which was atrocious, "DOA" was a much more worthy waste of an afternoon.