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D.O.A – Dead or Alive – Review

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Dead or Alive or D.O.A for short is a movie based on a video game series, and typically video game to movie conversions aren’t so great. Dead or Alive is actually the name of a fighting tournament and all the contestants are hand picked and flown to the tropical island destination where the tournament is to be held, to get there they must parachute out of the plane and travel to the tournament arena by sundown or face disqualification. The Tournament is an elimination system so we get to see the various fighters matching up against each other in no holds barred full contact contests, cleverly done so you never actually see any blood or gore.

Let’s take a look at the cast in Dead or Alive, taking the lead is Holly Vallance as Christie Allen, she’s a thief and we first get introduced as she is on a job, just about to get caught by the police. Next up is Devon Aoki who plays Princess Kasumi, her brother entered the DOA tournament in a previous year but never returned, she is searching to find him. And Finally the trio of girls is completed by Jaime Pressly as Tina Armstrong a tough pro wrestler who wants fighting credibility. The Trio look great and in particular Pressly is in amazing shape and throws those kicks like she knows what shes doing. Leading up the rest of the cast we have brit actor Matthew Marsden as Christie Allen’s squeeze Maximillian Marsh, we also have Eric Roberts playing Donovan the tournaments organiser.

Dead or Alive has a lively pace about it, for the most part its a decent looking movie, sure the colours are oversaturated, everything is larger than life and it is fairly cheesy in parts. So Entertaining, mindless and a guilty pleasure it definately is. The cast do exactly whats expected, the fight scenes are nicely done with a lot of artistic flair and it never tries to be something its not. With a running time of 87 minutes it’s a short sharp jab to the senses, and it’s just a lot of fun to watch.

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