Movie Review: DOA: Dead or Alive
If there’s one thing that can be said for movies based off of video games, it’s that they almost always suck. What might be an extremely fun game often makes a horrible movie. With this in mind, I watched DOA: Dead or Alive with such low expectations that I was almost guaranteed to be pleasantly surprised. After all, it crashed and burned at the box office. However, I was indeed pleasantly surprised.
The plot of the movie is incredibly flimsy, revolving around a fighting championship run by a shady dude on his own island. The prize? 10 Million dollars. The catch: oh yeah, like you never saw it coming, it’s all a ruse for some secret plan to become an unstoppable master of combat, and make even more money. For an action movie, it’s got just enough plot to hold it together, barely, which still amounts to more plot in the first fifteen minutes than the games have in their entirety.
On the whole, though, I enjoyed the movie. There are no angst-ridden, Oscar-worthy performances, and a lot of it seems like a flimsy excuse to get attractive babes in bikinis fighting, but the action is actually quite good. To top it off, all the actresses and actors seemed to do their own stunts, which always earns my respect. If you can get past the sketchy plot and just enjoy the action, it’s a fun film. Jaime Pressly stands out as American wrestler Tina Armstrong, and there’s a cute sideplot with a nerdy guy named Weatherby.
While it might be the type of movie that many will never admit to actually watching, it’s a fun ride. The DOA games were all about the ladies kicking ass (some guys kick ass too, but they’re not the focus of the movie), which is pretty much what this is. Think Charlie’s Angels meets WWF and some sort of wacky pseudo-James Bond plot to conquer the world. The world of, uh, fighting. However you want to describe it, the movie knows not to take itself too seriously — and you shouldn’t either. 7 out of 10 for being entertaining; depending on your mood, you could rate it anywhere from 2 to 9.
If you’re going to watch this one, you’ll probably want to rent it. For some reason it’s only available at Blockbuster, but if you’re the type to forgo physical stores entirely, you can also find it on Netflix.
September 15th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Does it make me a bad person that I’d be more interested in seeing a movie version of DoA: Extreme Beach Volleyball? I mean, I can’t imagine how boring two hours of volleyball would be, but I like the bouncey bouncey bounce of… volleyballs.
By the way, the especially frugal computer users can also choose to forgo Blockbuster or Netflix rentals and simply permanently rent a digital copy for no charge. Assuming they’re legally authorized to do so, of course.
September 16th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Jacob: uh, no. It doesn’t make you a bad person, but it probably makes you a prime target for the DOA: Xtreme games (yes, they spelled it without the E. Sigh), which I hear are quite bouncy. You’ll be happy to know that there is an extended volleyball sequence in the movie — shockingly, it’s even somewhat relevant to the plot!
(Just to be clear, 3 Green Fish in no way endorses, condones, promotes, or otherwise encourages illegal downloading of copyrighted materials. The movie and music industry models may be broken and in desperate need of re-envisioning, but that doesn’t mean we want you to break the law.)
September 16th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Hmm. I’ll have to search YouTube for the relevant scene.
Also, you don’t really need to be worried about anything to which you link — you can’t be held legally liable for any website to which you link, since you’re merely hosting an informational method of visiting a site, and not any content on the site itself. But even then, with a BitTorrent tracker such as TPB, you needn’t be worried: despite some of the legal hoops through which the (RI/MP) *AAs have jumped, trackers aren’t engaging in copyright infringement themselves, either, since they’re hosting just torrents — files containing locations of files — and databases full of connection information needed to make BitTorrent torrential. So have no fear: you merely have a link to a website that hosts links to things. Linkity link link.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:18 am
P.S.: It would be super-rad if you had Gravatars. Your website is getting awfully forum-y.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:18 am
P.P.S.: You should install the thing that lets people preview their comments before they post, since it is also helpful and made of good.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:28 am
3 people totally a forum make. (What is the difference between Gravatars and Avatars?)
And hmm, bittorrents - I’d always kind of wondered what they were. TPB was a very educational site… (they funny)
DOA: Dead or Alive sounds like not my kind of movie. And why do they repeat themselves in the title anyway?
September 17th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Jacob: Well, okay, so it’s legal. That’s great. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t put it past the AAs to sue whoever they can get their hands on. After all, they don’t seem inclined to stay legal or even sane in their pursuit of money… So you’ll understand if I don’t go out of my way to post any such links myself.
Gravatars and comment-previewing. Sounds good. I have a few things I want to add as upgrades, so I’ll try to do that soon.
c1: Why do they repeat the title? Because they want you to know what movie you’re watching.
Well, okay, maybe not. My guess is that the games are well known as both “Dead or Alive” and “DOA,” so maybe they thought that would increase name recognition? Or maybe they wanted to distinguish their movie from the completely unrelated “Dead or Alive” movie from the 90’s?
Actually, they probably thought it necessary so that they could make flashy DOA graphics to transition between scenes.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:01 am
C1: Bittorrent is a wonderful technology that allows data to be shared peer-to-peer around the world. What the data are, is up to the users of the technology. Gravatars are “globally recognizable avatars” — basically little pictures attached to an email address that can be automatically displayed on any website that speaks the Gravatar language. It’s pretty nifty, because it’s a “set it up once and it works everywhere forever” kind of thing. You write on one website that knows Gravatars with the email address you used, and there your picture is.