DOA makes no bones about the fact that it's a live action cartoon, aimed squarely at excitable children. The tone of the movie is fairly clear by the end of the first scene by which time the main character, an absconding ninja princess, has been invited to the DOA tournament by means of a shuriken caned at her as she hang-glides away from her mountain fortress. And I bet you thought people couldn't afford the upkeep on ninja armies in the present day.

Based on the computer game of the same name, it takes a cast of models and wrestlers, including Holly Valance and Devon Aoki, and sensibly has them play models and wrestlers. But for god's sake, don't these people know what DOA actually means?

The cinematography seems to be a running joke with the colour scheme leaning heavily towards the fluorescents whilst, touchingly, the characters are colour coded. Meanwhile a production assistant seems to have stamped every visible surface with the letters DOA, like a hyper caffeinated eight year old with a name tagger. Altogether it seems eerily like the ethos of House of Flying Daggers has been directly transposed onto Street Fighter: The Movie, with an added dash of CGI.

The film boils down to eighty minutes of the four main lady characters beating the bejesus out of everyone in sight, but with considerably more emphasis on the alive than the dead, and oddly little actual bloodshed. There's some hazy notion that it's about girl power or team work of some kind, though that's to forget that the film is pure phooey, a point which is rather aptly illustrated by the volleyball match inserted to break up the run of fight scenes in a nod towards the DOA: Volleyball spin-off. Liberating stuff. DOA, done DUI.

by Michael Simon

Dead or Alive
*

Dead Or Alive is the film-adaptation of the hugely popular computer game whereby fighters at the peak of their abilities battle each other to the death on an isolated, exotic island. Not that if you didn’t have an idea it was based on a computer game, you wouldn’t have already guessed so by the first 10 minutes.

The barrage of colourful graphics and loud contender statistic cards that ‘cleverly’ mimic the loading screens of the game, quickly make you weary and wishing that they had adapted a different, more peaceful game instead. Tetris anyone?

Soon enough however, something is amiss at this year’s tournament and I don’t just mean the acting or the silly fight scenes. There is of course an evil doctor at the heart of it and despite their differences, the fighters – mostly a scantily clad Holly Valance and Jaime Pressly – are forced to team up to try defeat him. Cue even more ridiculously staged battles whereby the bikinis and fashion get more screen time than the punches and kicks being landed.

Yet for all the awful elements of Dead Or Alive – and make no mistake it is awful – there is unfortunately a clear audience laying in wait for just a film like this whereby ass-kicking, bikini-wearing babes role play out their favourite computer game based fantasies.

The only problem for the filmmakers and studios is that that same audience they hope will pay to see the film have very likely already downloaded it from their online shareware buddies and distributed it across their hundreds of myspace friends. Probably just in time for the chat rooms to start gossiping whether a computer game version of the film will hit the shelves in time for Christmas.

by Tony Kelly