dead or alive Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Hoo boy. You'd have to search really far and pretty wide to find an action movie as unapologetically stupid as DOA: Dead or Alive. Then again, when a movie aspires to be nothing more than an unofficial Charlie's Angels sequel, it's best not to walk in expecting Merchant Ivory ... or even Michael Bay. But after sitting through the plotless, mindless and broadly colorful piece of brain candy known as DOA: Dead or Alive, I came to the conclusion that the flick is so stupid it makes Charlie's Angels and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle look like The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2 by comparison. And that's a whole lotta stupid.

The plot can be summed up in three simple words: Hot chicks fight. That's it: Very attractive women (none of whom could fight off a pushy butterfly in real life) are gathered together for a super-secret mega-battle tournament known as "Dead or Alive" -- which is kinda weird considering the flick's rated PG-13 and for all its comic book style violence, very few characters actually die. Come to think of it, the combatants are so skilled and so powerful I suspect they could beat up Zeus, Rocky and Superman without breaking a sweat. Not bad for a quartet of cuties who'd look more at home at a swanky pool party than soaring through a series of goofy fight scenes.

In a rather unexpected box office shift, MGM has announced their plan to move the video game-to-movie adaptation Dead Or Alive from the middle of this month until the first part of December. Typically, a move such as this one is done for a high profile movie with major monetary expectations from the studio. DOA will now be bringing its sexy-female-fighters-on-an-exotic-island plot into direct competition with some of the biggest films of this half of the year.

Now I know there will always be a crowd for this style of movie -- particularly when it includes a beach volleyball scene* -- but I'm seriously baffled by the wisdom of this move. Common wisdom holds that video game movies tend to be poor box office performers, and this flick looks like it could very well live up to that proud tradition. Maybe MGM is hoping if they throw it into the middle of the holiday season it'll tank quickly, and they can take it off the market in a hurry.

*Seriously, what the heck? If you, as a movie maker, feel the need to stick a beach volley ball game into the middle of your martial arts movie, maybe you need to reevaluate the direction of your flick. And if you, as a movie watcher, feel the need to go see a martial arts movie because it has a beach volley ball scene in it, maybe you need to get yourself some action. Of the non video game movie kind. I'm just sayin' ...