(BATTLE) ROYALE WITH CHEESE (CAKE) : Cory Yuen’s ‘D O A – Dead or Alive’ [4/10]

There isn't a great deal to be said about DOA : Dead Or Alive, apart from the fact that it isn't any good. The target audience would seem to be adolescent and pre-adolescent boys – specifically those familiar with the successful video-game on which the film is slavishly based. Such viewers (who, if British, may be stymied by the UK censor's decision to slap on a 15 certificate) might get a thrill or two out of seeing Holly Valance (as an "assassin and master thief"), Jaime Pressly (a suspiciously slender "superstar pro-wrestler") and Devon Aoki (a gravity-defying, sub-sub-Crouching Tiger "Ninja princess") kicking ass on a Thunderbirds–ish Pacific island as part of the eponymous 'DOA,' a high-tech, last-person-standing contest for a winner-take-all $10m prize.

There's very little to detain the rest of us: the dialogue is flat, the characters characterless, the CGI effects only so-so, the acting toneless, the plot laughable. The results have the bland, tacky glossiness of an All Saints video and the narrative complexity of teenypoppers S Club's shortlived series Miami 7 – though the small-screen comparison which most insistently comes to mind is Celebrity Love Island, here spiced up with regular mano-a-mano combat between the chiselled/babelicious contestants ("K.O.! Christie wins!" trills the computerised 'commentator'.)

Fights, we're told, can happen "anytime, anyplace" – and they might as well add "anywhere," to complete the impression that what we're watching is an extended drinks commercial. Except such an ad wouldn't feature so many nagging plot-holes (if DOA really is "the world's greatest martial-arts tournament", home come it isn't it televised?) and/or careless gaffes (when one particular bout is said to take place at 'sunrise', how come the shadows suggest it's noon?)

Failing even to work on the Crank level of campy, knowingly ridiculous fun, DOA is primarily an excuse for a tinnily repetitive, clangingly-scored series of choppily-edited, bone-crunching, but conspicuously bloodless fight-scenes. The violence here ("No weapons are allowed… except the human weapon!") is strictly on the Tom and Jerry level: despite that title the prospect of actual death seems remote in the extreme. Even an extended 'burly brawl' on a steep staircase involving countless swordsmen and women taking on an unarmed couple results in nary a bruise to the defeated parties. Sex, meanwhile, is very much kept behind closed doors: the film grabs every chance to show off its' stars T+A assets, but when push comes to shove proves oddly coy, even chaste.

For all the kinetic stuntwork and frantic cutting, proceedings have an oddly inert feel which mean that even at 80-odd minutes DOA manages to outstay its welcome. That skimpy running-time is, of course, padded out by lengthy end-credits which, as well as being mildly racist (for some reason the main Asian actors are all listed after their white counterparts), reveal the presence of a dozen or so producers and executive producers. This roll of (dis-)honour includes a certain Paul W S Anderson – director of 2004 videogame adaptation AVP : Alien Vs Predator, to whose brokenbacked title this picture's moniker presumably nods.

Any film buff/nerd seeing DOA : Dead or Alive on a marquee would of course be forgiven for expecting a double bill of classic noir (featuring Edmond O'Brien, or perhaps even Dennis Quaid) and Takashi Miike yakuza-weirdness. So it's just as well DOA will surely enjoy the most fleeting of smash-and-grab multiplex runs: it's very much straight-to-video stuff, the major giveaway being the presence of B-movie king Eric Roberts as the island's Machiavellian Mr Big. In more capable hands, Roberts might have been able to ham it up Vincent Price-style, and the picture could possibly have worked if pitched as a horror-tinged cross between Battle Royale, House on Haunted Hill and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

As it is, director Yuen and his scriptwriters seem content to go through the motions, allowing Roberts to sleepwalk through proceedings surrounded by his flowing grey locks and snazzy oriental robes. His fiendish, dastardly scheme, when it's finally revealed, turns out to make no sense whatsoever – some daftness involving 'nano-bots' and a pair of sunglasses which give the wearer an edge over any fight-opponent, but which prove all too easy to simply knock off. The hurried climax does feature the film's biggest laugh – albeit unintentional – when lovelorn computer "geek" Weatherby (hunky Steve Howey, unconvincingly 'uglied up' with specs and greased-down hair) sends out a distress call to summon help… and does so by earnestly logging on to the CIA's official website.

Neil Young
12th September, 2006

D O A – DEAD OR ALIVE : [4/10] : USA (US/Ger) 2006 : Cory YUEN : 87 mins (BBFC timing)
seen at Odeon cinema, MetroCentre, Gateshead (UK), 12th September 2006 – press show