Dead or Alive movie review

D.O.A.

Ok so at this point we have a mortal kombat movie and a street fighter movie so the next logical step is the dead or alive series. Will this series do any better than its fighting game adaptation brothers? As always read on to find out.

D.O.A. or Dead or Alive is about a tournament of the world’s greatest fighters hosted by Victor Donovan. Over the course of a few days the fighters compete in single KO elimination contest. Towards the end the final 4 find out Donovan has other motives and the fighters have to compete against him. There are a few sub plots going on as well. Christie and max are trying to find a vault full of money. And Kasumi is trying to find her brother while avoiding Ayane who is after her.

Ok so D.O.A. is the third movie based on a fighting game and personally I think it’s the best out of all 3 in the next few years we will get a Tekken movie and an art of fighting movie so time will tell if it holds its place. Now you’re probably wondering why I like this one best so let me get into it.

First off it’s the plot. Now it doesn’t follow the games exactly it gets the main gist correct. Instead of a huge corporation trying to make the ultimate weapon its one man trying to compile all the fighter's data to make a program which is essentially the same goal.

Other things that are nicely done are a lot of little things such as the health bars when Donovan is watching the first round fights the computer voice saying “ready, fight!” Which is from the game. There’s a scene where 4 of the female fighters play volleyball while Zach, another fighter, does the commentary and this is a fan service reference to dead or alive Xtreme beach volleyball. What’s good about this scene is they do not just focus on the fan service there an action scene that cuts in and out of the volleyball scene.

Another thing that’s cool is the amount of characters. Now unlike in MK2 they decided to focus on only a few characters and just write the others off as fighters in the tournament instead of trying to make them intricate to the plot and most of which are defeated and therefore sent home early in the movie.

That’s another thing the fighters are mostly in traditional out fits from the games and easily recognizable by fans and most are introduced by name at least weather it’s the health bar or contest bracket or during the scanning scene. However the characters are not all done well there’s a few tradeoffs I’m not to fond off.

First Zach’s personality is dead on but except during the warm up montage he doesn’t do any Muay Thai moves, which is his fighting style from the game. The Kasumi Hayate and Ayane relationship is correct but they grossly overuse the word Shinobi in the wrong context. In the movie they use shinobi to describe a rouge ninja the real use of shinobi is just another word for ninja.

Donovan’s character is mostly correct with a few minor details changed. In the game he is head of DOAtech in the movie he’s head of the D.O.A. tournament. In the game he hires Ayane in the movie he does not. In the game and the movie he is responsible for Helena's mother’s death.

And of course there’s Christie in the game she is a ruthless assassin but in the movie they make her out to be a fun spirited thief only mentioning her assassin status in text.

The acting is only ok some of the banter is funny such as bass walking in on Tina in situations that make it look as if she is a lesbian to him. Also it was kind of neat how a real wrestler (Kevin Nash) played bass who in the game is also a wrestler.
Now what’s a movie based on a fighting game without fighting so let’s talk about that. The fights are very well choreographed witch is no surprise as the director is Corey Yuen who has directed some other very good martial arts films including so close, the enforcer, and the first transporter. One of my favorite scenes is when Hayabusa is fighting the guards on his way up the stairs it’s so brutal and fast paced.

There are also some well placed comedic sound effects like when Leon pumps his arms they make gun cocking sounds and during Tina and Zach’s fight when they hit each other tiny explosive noises can be heard.

Over all the movie is a pretty good kung-fu flick and does well as a video game movie it has recognizable characters as well as a plot similar to the games while only changing a few minor details but not deviating to far from the objective of the plot.

How would I do it? Well besides the character changes I mentioned I would pretty much leave it alone.

Over all the movie gets 8 out of 10 Shinobis. The movie succeeds where other video game movies fail including recognizable characters and a ton of tiny little things from the game and it’s always the little things isn’t it?

The acting gets 6 out of 10. It was horrible but most of the actors just phoned it in and there was a bit of over acting.

The plot gets 7 out of 10. The end objective is the same as the game and most details are the same but they also change a few characters a bit towards the bad side.

And the content gets 8 out of 10. Lots of characters lots of little things from the games and it’s the first fighting game movie to sneak health bars in there.

Ok that’s done next up we get back to the crap fest that is Uwe Boll with Bloodrayne 2 a straight to DVD pile of vampire turd. I have obtained a laptop recently so I will be able to complete these reviews faster now. After Bloodrayne 2 we finish up the resident evil series then on to Hitman followed by 2 boll movies in a row. See you next time.