DOA: Dead Or Alive (2006)

Ever remember fighting video games that were the rave? Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Double Dragon have had their share in the market and that was when Hollywood stepped in and bashed their images without mercy. The three were also common for their predominantly masculine characters and fewer females. On the other hand, DOA: Dead Or Alive is reversed: predominantly female with fewer males. Just like the aforementioned franchises, DOA was also subjected to merciless thrashing by Hollywood, and I am going to find out how then reception turned unsurprisingly negative.

It is the usual tradition for the Resident Evil movies to bill four logos of the studios responsible for them: Universal, Constantin Film, Impact Pictures, VIP Media. This one follows suit. So after that sequence, we look into the setting for the movie, and one big problem has already sufficed: cheesy C.G.'ed landscape. I mean, even the graphics on Sega Mega Drive let alone Dreamcast and Sony PlayStation were superior to this. Then there are the two Japanese characters, Princess Kasumi and Ryu Hayabusa, and their dialogue is so hard to describe that I may as well as call it "the battle of metaphors". Then she storms out of the castle, revealing a horde of ninjas with bandanas of purple and white. Is this Kasumi's idea or something? How can ninjas or samurai be taken seriously?

So Ayane pledges her servitude to Kasumi but threatens death if she leaves the clan. But the strangest thing in this scene is that nobody kneels when Kasumi stands before them but does so only after Ryu does. These have to be the least convincing servants in any movie. And just when you thought this insanity couldn't progress, Kasumi hurls her katana as if defying the laws of physics. It glides straight through the aid without falling midway; it even sustains her weight when she jumps on it like a diving board. Explain that! Worse, she deploys a hang-glider and a boomerang happens to run into her and she catches it without losing her fingers or it tearing the apparatus. So in roughly three minutes, this turns into an Uwe Boll movie where the laws of physics are swept aside, dialogue sounds so watered down, and the camera shots vibrate. That's Kasumi's introductory story.

Okay, we are now in the South China Sea (thanks for the location). We have a another lead character, Tina. More problems arise: first, she is tired of being fake yet the irony is she speaks with what I'm solidly convinced is a fake southern accent. Second, the camera work to emulate her exercise routine. Third, her fight moves obviously do little damage on the pirates who appear to just throw themselves off instead of being beaten off the boat. These pirates are good with guns but can't lay waste to one woman who repeatedly calls herself a fake wrestler. What does that even mean? But let's finish her introduction with the same stupidity of a boomerang flying out of nowhere.

So after that tirade of headache injury, we find a scene in Hong Kong which mostly has to disappoint many male fans with high testosterone. This is something they would call a "cocktease scene", in which we are supposed to be turned on by a woman (Christie, in this case) in a shower but do not see her complete beauty. Only the cops seem to enjoy this scene, I do not. When she foils the cops, this pain-in-the-head editing is employed to further my anguish: she is topless yet the power of rapid cuts heightens the frustration of being turned on and off. I'm pretty sure digital technology was employed here to make the towel and bra change shape for convenience. One scene was edited to aggravate the male sex rather than make up for the silliness from earlier.

How saucy. She runs out of the hotel in her underwear (Victoria's Secret product placement, perhaps?) and finds a gentleman in an overcoat. Now this scene too has to aggravate me: she manages to steal his stuff and stuff him into a suitcase without him making so much noise, just in a very small margin of time of less than four minutes. A scuffle would have unraveled, yet this visually impossible task was made to look so easy! More, she even steals a motorcycle without having ignited it with a key. Lastly is the same trick in which a boomerang of the same type, lodges into the windshield without cleaving her face.

So for each introduction, there have been rapid editing, cheesy visual effects, and fight moves that look so poor and disengaging that we might have well just skipped all that to the main event.

This is Tina's father. I'm not going lie, this is wholly unconvincing because he looks more like her elder brother unless he was fourteen when she was born.

So everyone else whose introductory scenes were not filmed or made was invited to DOA. Another problem I had just discovered is the obvious continuity: Max was sitting down when Christie was facing him. Suddenly she's behind him and eventually she's in front of him again. That's cheesy editing for you and poor directing.

So let me sum this up. Throughout this movie, we have fight scenes coupled with sporadic editing, characters who might as well just bite the dust in any fight that they wind up in, elementary C.G.I., crude blue screen effects and principal photography, and, worst of all, sensual cock-teasing. This movie is a hit-and-miss from living up to its video game source material and offends many fans for the tainting of the lovable characters and fighting skills that made the game popular. 

So what is the plot in the movie? Everyone has been invited for the best at their fighting skills to a Dead Or Alive (DOA) tournament, the winner of which will receive a grand prize of $10 million. Kasumi is on a search for her brother who was last contesting in the tournament the previous year but has been assumed dead without any solid proof. Ayane, Kasumi's servant, has turned into her assassin to restore the honor of the clan. Some dark secrets behind Dr. Victor Donovan governing the tournament and what happened to Helena's father, Fame Douglas, gradually suffice. (Gee, doesn't that remind you of Dr. Victor Von Doom of the Fantastic 4? And who the hell would name themselves "Fame" unless the were abnormally so full of themselves?)

There is something about this who set-up that attracts my undue attention. This tournament was turned into an actual video game, as if the company was trying to promote their release. The parameters for tournament look like they were lifted directly from the game itself. One question is, who is manning the camera without crossing paths with the contestants?

OK. So there are cameras everywhere, but the computer noted that the "fight can take place anytime, anywhere." So that still begs the question because many of the camera are fixed so cannot capture the action everywhere.

Kasumi has a flashback where she was kidnapped and rescued by her brother, Hayate. It was already stated that if she ever left the clan, she would be killed (she becomes a shinobi, an outcast). So this should not be first time, right? If they both left the clan prior to the present, they would not be allowed back without facing the ax.

So let's see, other than the three fatal females, we have Hayabusa, Hayate, Ayane, Armstrong, Max, Zack, Leon, Helena, Bayman and Weatherby, to mention but a few.

Zack is one black stereotype who I really want out of this tournament. A wisecrack Tecmo version of Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage, he hits on Tina even after ridiculing her on the plane earlier for labeling her wrestling motif as amateurish. If anyone was expecting this bozo to bite the dust, that one moment is squandered when Leon is thrown out of the fight zone and plummets into the pool instead of Zack.

Kasumi is uptight, determined and stern. She is a Tecmo knockoff of Mortal Kombat's Sonya Blade. As I have mentioned, she was so not willing to be downtrodden by the repressive regime of her clan so that she could search for her brother. If I am certain, she also has a similar persona to Mortal Kombat's Liu Kang, who focused on avenging his brother's death at the hands of his for Tseng Sung.

With all this noted down, I think there is a similarity between Mortal Kombat (1995) and this DOA movie, not that I can say there are similarities between their video game sources.

You know that cliche where a couple are caressing in bed but are wildly interrupted when a fight breaks into their bed? That cliche has now become more commonplace. Also during the entire scene, I have already made mention of shaky camera movements and sporadic editing, which are now also accompanied by unconventional sound effects like gun-cocking and air-piercing. This trait is prevalent throughout this movie and with all the fights littered throughout this movie, I could never even grasp the existence of the plot.

So let's see. A fight between Leon and Kasumi lasts around two minutes 20 seconds of film run time, yet a fight between Bayman and Max barely lasts around 20 seconds. How pathetic that Max and Kasumi each defeat a heavyweight behemoth as if they were just sissies under that bravado. Max merely flipped his shoes at Bayman--one into his crotch, another into his head before falling into a statue which blanks him out. Bayman is all brawn, no brain while Max is all brain, no brawn.

So that was day one. Day two is next, and Tina fights her daddy. She winds easily, only because her dad is heavier than her and cannot sustain his weight on a raft.

This has to be the iconic scene that made it from the games. Four bikini-clad females play volleyball to pass the time from all that brutality. This truly warms my blood as a sensual instrument that keeps me engaged.

Reminder. The rest of the plot has been shoehorned. The dark secrets of Donovan's empire have been discovered, in which he "downloads" the data of every fighter participating in the tournament. What makes even less sense is that every one who paid in advance receives the downloads. I cannot help but think that this does confirm my deduction into the deal with this scheme. This tournament involves this video game industry scenario, where we learn that they are corrupt and full of dirt. If this plot makes little sense, then this movie deserves to be ridiculed if not for the beauties in bikini. .