That's right I'm reviewing Dead or Alive a crappy film based on a popular video game so buckle up. The film premiered in 2006 and stars Jaime Pressly, Devon Aoki, Holly Valance, Sarah Carter, and the Best of the Best himself Eric Roberts. Now unlike Legend of Chun-Li and King of Fighters movie this film is pretty accurate from the games sure it might not look like it but it is.
So the plot is simple a group of fighters are gathered to an island to participate in a tournament Dead or Alive where the winner receives the $10 million prize. However, there are a few subplots that follow before and during Dead or Alive. Such as Kasumi (played by Devon Aoki) leaves her ninja clan entering the tournament in order to find her missing brother Hayate (played by Collin Chou) who was killed or disappeared from the previous tournament. Another subplot that Christie (played by Holly Valance) and her accomplice Max (played by Maximillian Marsh) enters the Dead or Alive tournament to find a vault which holds $100 million dollars. As the film progresses we see matches between fighters from the game to serve as padding since some of the familiar characters such as Brad Wong and Gen Fu don't have that much screen time. A match breaks out between Kasumi and Leon (played by Silvio Simac) (the man who "supposedly" defeated Hayate from the previous tournament) and trust me this is one of many good fight scenes. Kasumi defeats Leon believing that he couldn't have defeated her brother and also believing that Victor Donovan (played by Eric Roberts) (the man in charge of the tournament) maybe lying. While tournament is going on Kasumi gets attacked by Ayane (played by Natassia Malthe) due to that she's honor bound to kill her for leaving the ninja clan. Donovan's intentions are revealed later when Weatherby (played by Steve Howey) tells Helena (played by Sarah Carter) that Donovan had her father killed and took over DOATEC. OK if this guy knew that Donovan had Helena's father killed why did he wait until the following year to tell her that? He couldn't just report him to the cops I don't know. Earlier in the film before the start of the tournament each of the fighters is injected with nanobots that collect data of the fighter's skills. So with the final four fighters Kasumi, Tina (played by Jaime Pressly), Christie, and Hayabusa (played by Kane Kosugi) they are set up in a trap which further reveals that Donovan will harvest these nanobots from the best DOA fighters, creating a technology where the host will be able to predict and adapt to any fighting style and therefore defeat any combatant. Also it turns out that Donovan held Hayate captive after winning last year's tournament in order to experiment this technology on Hayate. With the help of Helena and Weatherby Donovan's plan to sell this tech to terrorists has been stop and the four fighters escape. But not before Donovan makes his escape he actives the island's self-destruct sequence, kind of a James Bond cliche but whatever. The final scene in the film is a fight between the female lead characters and Donovan and a fight between Hayabusa and Bayman (Derek Boyer) which I'm not gonna lie these are really good fight scenes, better then Legend of Chun-Li in comparison. So the DOA fighters manage to defeat Donovan and escape the island before it explodes the end.
Further thoughts on DOA: Dead or Alive: First let me point the flaws, it's obvious that they couldn't use all of the characters from the games so they pretty much hand-picked the popular characters I guess. Not to mention that they created two characters (Weatherby and Max) just for this film they don't exist in any DOA series. As much as they were "useful" it's still unnecessary and awkward to have in the film especially when they made a few scenes a bit off. I can complain about the white-washing of Ayane but I would just be giving pointless ranting so let me put it like this. If you can't get an Asian actor/actress to play an Asian character just get another character or just create a new character. Don't get a White actor/actress to play an Asian character it's neither creative nor a brilliant idea it just tells me that the filmmaker is lazy and some what kind of a racist. And now to the good parts the fight scenes are really good throughout the film. Except for that one fight scene between Tina and Zach (Brian J. White) well not the whole fight scene just that one moment when Zach throws Tina in the air and about to do a spinning back kick. And with the help of crappy Wire-Fu for a split-second Tina just STOPS IN MID-AIR before Zach kicks her down. Plus it's nice to see Eric Roberts still a bad ass since Best of the Best.
My Final Verdict: I take back what I said that it's a crappy film based on a popular video game. Sure it has flaws but it's just so enjoyable in its own right. With Mortal Kombat being the only video game film that's flaw yet still an awesome film, DOA comes second place in the standard of what video game films should be. It's not as great but it's far superior to any other crappy video game films that came out over the years. I understand that most fans of the DOA games may not like this film but I recommend any DOA fan to watch this film. Stay tuned next week as I do a two part review of X3: The Last Stand.
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