DOA: Dead or Alive - No one will ever admit to liking this film

That’s because it’s possibly the worst film ever made.  I implore you never to waste your time watching this garbage.  I would certainly never watch it multiple times over the years, let alone own it on DVD.  Honest.

I thought I’d review ‘DOA: Dead or Alive’ on (about) my fourth viewing.  I felt such a work of art requires numerous screenings to truly understand such a complex structure and narrative.  Okay, I’m joking – this is simply a guilty pleasure film of mine.  I’ve never played the computer game that it’s based on, but, from my experience, pretty much no film based on a computer game has ever been hailed as a masterpiece.  This one is no different.  The dialogue is extremely clunky.  Every line for about the first half hour is designed to inform us of each character’s relationship and (slim) motivations for doing whatever the hell they’re going to do.

Talking of characters, they’re about as two dimensional as the pixelated sprites that they’re based on.  Don’t expect any great development in this story.  Ah, yes, the story.  Well, if you don’t know ‘Dead or Alive’ is based on a ‘one-on-one’ fighting games, so there’s not much story to talk of.  The film is basically the same – a trio of ridiculously brilliant fighting women gets invited to a tournament called ‘Dead or Alive’ (where no one actually dies – if you’re looking for a computer game to film where they die – try (the first) ‘Mortal Kombat’ film!).  It just so happens that our three central protagonists are also extremely attractive, therefore we’re supposed to root for them.  And, whereas their dodgy dialogue can be excused due to their physical appearance, Eric Roberts’ performance is not afforded the same luxury – for he’s the evil mastermind in charge of setting up the tournament and intends on stealing the three girls’ powers for his own.  He’s about as threatening as the green silk lounge suit he wears through this film.

What follows is a series of fights, nicely choreographed, but also completely unrealistic, involving our annoying attractive heroines.  Um, and that’s about it.  If you’re a teenage boy you’ll probably love this and long for the day that your girlfriend will be just like the girls on film.  Alternatively, if you’re someone like me who also likes it and won’t admit to liking a film as bad as this, you’ll also love it (and just not tell anyone).

It is bad.  There’s no mistaking how bad it is, but it also has an audience of faceless guys who will make sure that it gets repeated viewing – and it’s not because their X-boxes are broken and they need their fix of a fighting game.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that