DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)

My idea for this week’s post was to write about tournament fighting movies.  For the most part, the movie succeeds with the tournament aspect.  The fights are entertaining, if a little unrealistic.  But I already covered that topic in my post for the Mortal Kombat movies.  Go figure, I used the most popular of tournament fighting movies based on video games to discuss the topic of tournament fighting movies.  I may have even mentioned this week’s movie.  I can’t remember.

That is why this is going to turn into one of those standard “Here are the reasons the movie is what it is” posts.  The only other topic that jumps to mind is video game movies and I am not ready to cover that messy subject.  With the topic I was willing to write about already covered, I have to resort to a tried and tested post blueprint.

This week’s movie is DOA: Dead or Alive.  It was released in 2006 and followed the best fighters in their respective styles coming together on an island to see who the best was.  Kasumi (Devon Aoki) was a princess looking for her brother, who went missing after fighting in the previous year’s tournament.  Christie Allen (Holly Valance) was a thief who wanted to steal the prize money.  Tina Armstrong (Jaime Pressly) was a professional wrestler who wanted to show the world that she could really fight.  Together, they uncovered an evil plan masterminded by the tournament leader Donovan (Eric Roberts) and tried to put an end to it with Helena Douglas (Sarah Carter), the daughter of the original tournament leader.  Also along for the ride were Christie’s partner in crime Max (Matthew Marsden), Kasumi’s protector Ryu Hayabusa (Kane Kosugi), and Weatherby (Steve Howie), a tech employee who was in love with Helena.

If DOA: Dead or Alive wasn’t based on the game it was based on, it could be a solid to great movie.  If it had a more focused tone, it could be a solid to great movie.  There were a lot of things that could have made this movie better.  Instead, there is a unique badness that makes it stand out.  It’s not boring.  It’s pretty fun, actually.  But it is terrible in all the wrong ways.  I’m going to lay out some stuff that made DOA: Dead or Alive into the movie it became.  I’m going to get specific with things instead of talking about generalizations, since it will keep me from repeating myself as much as usual.

Bass Armstrong

Tina Armstrong was one of the main characters of DOA: Dead or Alive.  She was the wrestler portrayed by Jaime Pressly who wanted to prove that she could fight.  Part of her reasoning behind this desire was her father, Bass.  Played by Kevin Nash, Bass Armstrong was a world renowned professional wrestler who never took his fighting seriously.  He was presented as a comedic character.

Kevin Nash showed off his comedic stylings with the character.  This was most apparent in the single fight scene that he had, where Bass fought his daughter as they tried to knock each other into the water.  The first person in the water would lose.  You could tell that he wanted his daughter to win while also wanting to put on a good show.  It is Kevin Nash’s real professional wrestling experience that helped him sell the fight.  He knew how to play it to make the best of his small time on screen.  The performance showed he was a capable actor who could go on to do better work in better movies down the line.

Weatherby’s Love Scene

The title of this part of the movie might sound misleading.  I don’t mean sex scene when I say love scene.  Though the movie was super sexy because of the video game franchise that it was based on, there wasn’t a whole lot of actual sexing going on.  There were mistaken scenes of sexing on the part of Bass walking in on his daughter and misunderstanding her friendship with other competitors, but those weren’t sex scenes.  Neither was this.

Weatherby was in love with Helena.  She didn’t even know who he was.  At one point in the movie, he decided that it was time to make his move.  He was going to introduce himself and see where things went.  As he walked toward her, he imagined what their love would be like.  It was a quick moment that included the two of them running their hands along each other’s bodies while dancing.  The music playing in the background was that stereotypical romance music that I’m sure was made before The Sims but I know mostly from The Sims when characters fall in love.  Rose petals also blew across the screen during the imagined love.

This moment was possibly the best comedy in the movie, though very out of place.  Weatherby was the comic relief, but this imagined love scene didn’t fit with the sexy action of the rest of the movie.  It ended up being a goofy little bit that did no more than make me chuckle and think “Why couldn’t this movie have more of this?”

Volleyball

No film adaptation of the Dead or Alive video game franchise would be complete without the obligatory beach volleyball scene.  The sport helps sum up the themes of Dead or Alive.  There are sexy women in bikinis jumping around.  That’s exactly what you would expect of DOA: Dead or Alive.

The volleyball scene was also a nod to the spin-off series of video games called Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.  The games are known more than anything for the physics that they use when the women move.  They intend for male players to get aroused by the women through curves, jiggles, and other physical things during the volleyball games.  The movie used gratuitous shots of the main characters playing volleyball to titillate the audience.  Both have similar intentions, but get to their destinations through the different means of their different mediums.

Eric Roberts

He’s Eric freakin’ Roberts.  How can I not bring him up?  The guy has a presence that overwhelms everything he does.  He could be in the smallest bit role in the crappiest movie (Chicks Dig Gay Guys) and still make an impression.  There’s something that comes out every time he’s on screen that makes things more entertaining.  You can’t help but enjoy the guy.

For the majority of DOA: Dead or Alive, Eric Roberts was doing the typical Eric Roberts thing.  He was showing up, being awesomely Eric Roberts, and then leaving the scene.  That would change in the final third of the movie when Donovan’s true intentions were revealed.  He used sunglasses to give himself super martial arts skills, and he became a kung-fu badass.  That’s right!  Eric Roberts was doing some martial arts fighting near the end of the movie.  Much of the fighting used wirework, but that doesn’t erase the fact that it was Eric Roberts (or his character) doing this stuff.  Just the fact that it was Eric Roberts makes it ten times more entertaining than it should be.

Sound Effects

I would feel bad if I went through this post without mentioning the sound effects.  We can breeze by the love music that I mentioned during my description of the Weatherby scene.  There are other sound effects to be discussed.

The ones that come to mind were during the fight between Tina Armstrong and Zack (Brian White).  Most of the kicks and punches were simple thuds, but a few moments added flair to what was happening.  There were screeches as Tina spun through the air.  There was a gun cocking and firing when Tina did a forward flip and kicked Zack on the top of the head with the heel of her foot.  But the biggest sound effect moment was when she punched Zack in the jaw and the sound of tweeting birds echoed through the music.  The sound effects were little bursts of comedy in what wasn’t a comedic scene.

There was also a Wilhelm scream in the movie.  That’s in every movie, though, so that shouldn’t count.

The Camaraderie

The final thing to highlight is how friendly the characters were with one another throughout DOA: Dead or Alive.  Most tournament fighting movies involve serious injury or death to the losers.  Look at the most popular of the bunch, Mortal Kombat.  Right in the title, it tells you that characters are going to die as a result of the fighting.  DOA: Dead or Alive makes you think that some of the characters are going to die in the movie.  Sure, some do.  But the tournament fights simply end with someone giving up or being knocked out.

This can all come down to the friendship between the characters.  Of course, there was no bad blood between Bass and his daughter Tina.  They loved each other and weren’t going to try to harm one another.  Tina’s other big fight, with Zack, wasn’t brutal either.  They hit each other hard but there was a friendly antagonism between the characters.  They didn’t want to hurt each other.  They were playing around in their fighting and bickering throughout the movie.

The only time that the main three characters were truly against each other was when they arrived at the island.  Kasumi, Christie, and Tina soon realised that they would have to work together to make it to the compound on time.  Their bond of working together never broke in the movie.  Though they wanted to win (or in Christie’s case take) the prize, they weren’t out to harm each other.  The tournament fighting was competitive rather than life or death.  It set DOA: Dead or Alive apart from other tournament fighting movies.

That’s all I’ve got for DOA: Dead or Alive.  It’s not a great movie, but it is an interesting counterpart to other movies of its type.  It tried to be three different tones and none of them fit together.  I still enjoy the movie.  It’s entertaining in some strange way that makes me want to rewatch it.  The movie is worth a watch if only to see the insanity.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  Even if you don’t like it, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff.  You should be able to appreciate that.

You should also be able to appreciate these notes:

• I mentioned Mortal Kombat and Chicks Dig Gay Guys in the post.
• Robin Shou was in DOA: Dead or Alive.  He was also in Death Race, Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno, Mortal Kombat, and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
• DOA: Dead or Alive featured Eric Roberts.  He has been in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before.  He was in A Talking Cat!?!, Chicks Dig Gay Guys, and The Human Centipede 3.
• Jaime Pressly was also in DOA: Dead or Alive.  She has been in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, Torque, and Cruel World.
• Did you recognize Steve Howie as Weatherby?  He was the star of Stan Helsing, which I covered a long time ago.
• Matthew Marsden showed up in DOA: Dead or Alive.  He could previously be seen in Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid.
• I wrote a little bit about Kevin Nash.  He was already in the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Monster Brawl.
• Finally, we have Devon Aoki.  She was in D.E.B.S. as well as DOA: Dead or Alive.
• Have you seen DOA: Dead or Alive?  What do you think about the movie?  Is it good?  Is it bad?  Is it interesting?  Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
• Do you have any movies that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  Let me know about them.  Tell me in the comments or on Twitter.  Any suggestions help with scheduling down the line.
• If you want to see clips of some of the bad movies I watch, consider adding me on snapchat.  Find the username jurassicgriffin and add me.  My stories sometimes get filled with bad movie clips.
• Next week’s movie is going to be Ishtar.  I’ve never seen it, but I always hear about how bad it is.  I’m looking forward to knocking this one out of my bad movie blind spots.  Be back here next week for another post about another bad movie.