D.O.A.: Dead or Alive Reviews

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this flick but I still ended up watching the damned thing. First of all, when you have a cast composed of 5 women and the most famous one is only Jaime Pressly, you should know you are in trouble. In fact, I have to admit that it was not as bad as I expected. I have actually never played the game it was based on but, at least, contrary to the dreadful 'Street Figther', they gave us a fighting tournament which looked more like one of those games. I also liked the introduction of the characters, even though the way they were invited was rather preposterous. Finally, I read that some people were not convinced by the fighting scenes but I disagree, they were pretty decent in my opinion. So, it seems that they had all the basic ingredients right which is pretty rare for a video-game adaptation but, even so, the whole thing was still underwhelming though. Indeed, even though the ladies looked charming, the dialogues and acting were really weak and, on top of that, they did add just way too many lame sub-plots and, towards the end, the whole thing completely fell apart. Anyway, to conclude, my rating might be a little too generous here, it was still pretty weak and it's too bad because the whole thing actually had some potential.

You know, this movie has got so much shit dumped on it that I went into it expecting the crappiest movie ever, or something to the equivalent. I was positively surprised to find it an entertaining, but ultimately extremely meaningless piece of cinema. The story has a few sideplots here and there, but they're primarily meaningless, just like the main story (which is pretty dumb as well). It's basically just a bunch of extremely weak and clichéd characters duking it out constantly, except occasionally we get to see them talk some korny dialogue. Also, sometimes there are weird transitions, mostly using the movie's logo to change from scene to scene. Oh yeah, the story is also extremely predictable and full of plot holes. All the actors are surprisingly mediocre, even though most of them do have enough charisma to pull off the roles they're given. The only standout is the guy who played the old man who made the tournament possible. Also I would've loved to see more of Gen Fu, but we basically saw him in a whoopping 3 or 4 scenes of the movie, and never properly saw him fight, which is pretty annoying since he would've looked hilarious.

DOA is an incredibly good looking film. Every fight scene featured here is simply a great watch, because of the unique and extremely variable visuals found here. The choreography is somewhat regular, even though slightly more high flying than in most movies, but the direction makes it look about two hundred times better than it really is. Yuen uses the fact that he can do whatever he wants with the fights since they don't mean much to the half-assed story, and he uses it pretty much as well as a human being could within a limited budget. The editor also did a great job here, but only kinda... Some of the scenes are really weirdly cut. First we see someone fall down, then we see the opponent start a kick, and then all the sudden the fallen one is standing again in order to receive the kick. It just bothered me slightly, that's all. Yuen seriously did an awesome job here, and I personally would love to see more of him, perhaps next time something with a point.

That was the problem here. This movie had no meaning whatsoever. It was basically just random, awesome fights, and if you want to see something more, don't get this movie... But fuck it, I don't need anything more than that personally. This is a great movie to watch after you turn off your brain for a moment, because it is so incredibly entertaining when the fights come. Just fun, nothing more, nothing less.

Let's see Jaime Pressly & Sarah Carter in Bikinis in most of the movie. Oh did I mention they kick ass as well? lol Sorry I liked this movie, for video games turned to movies. This is one of the tops. Right below the 1st Tomb Raider & Mortal Kombat & Resident Evil. So I guess that makes it top 4 of video game movies...lol

This goes to prove that Eric Roberts being in a film will not automatically make it good.

This is probably the worst film I've seen all year, and the year hasn't even finished yet!!

I can't recall anything about it worth noting except there is no point in wasting your life with it!

Fan service out the wazoo. They threw out most of the games' plot(s) (such as it was). They did manage to get all the girl playing beach volleyball in bikinis. There's some beefcake in there too.

The fights are all well choreographed, but they went for a generic martial arts look & feel. Tina is the exception; a lot of her moves did seem to be wrestling based. She also had the best (most brutal) fight, with Zack.

As far as video game adaptions go this is one of the better ones. It's certainly one of the best of the fighting game adaptions (what, there's STREETFIGHTER (oog), MORTAL KOMBAT (good), MORTAL KOMBAT II (decent), THE AVENGING FIST (okay unofficial Tekken movie) and I can't think of any others).

Nobody embarrasses themselves. It's a good time. I wonder when they'll get around to making a Virtua Fighter movie?