DOA: Dead or Alive

“You can have him. But what about the other 300?”

I rented DOA: Dead or Alive because I can’t help but love Jamie Pressley. I’ve followed her career every since that god-awful and yet somehow impossible to turn off Poison Ivy sequel. She’s gorgeous, funny, and sexy-as-hell. What’s not to like? So when I saw that she, along with some other nice-to-look-at ladies were teaming up in a martial arts film that looks like a ladies Mortal Kombat, I snatched this puppy up in my NetFlix queue and put it right up there at the top.

 In the opening montage of DOA, a group of the best women fighters are challenged and invited to the ultimate martial arts contest – DOA.  These amazing ladies each have a specialized skill, including Christie Allen, a jewel thief who really wants what is in the island’s safe, Tina Armstrong (woot Jamie!), a pro-wrestler who wants to prove she isn’t a fake, Helena Douglas, the daughter of the creator of DOA who wants to honor her father’s memory, and Kasumi, a Ninja princess who has been exiled from her clan so that she might find what happened to her brother, who left the year before to fight in DOA. Off these ladies go to the private island where the tournament takes place. After being told to jump out of the place and make their way to the main fighting location and actually enter the tournament. All of the fighters are put into a pool and pitted against each other where they must knock out their opponents or be sent home. As the usual story goes these ladies fight each other but soon learn to depend on each other when an even greater evil is unearthed. The tournament’s master Donovan is up to something, and the only way good can win is if these ladies can start to work together instead of fight each other.

This movie is fun. Period. The story is silly, of course, but the scenery is nice. The martial arts are fun while not nearly as “true” as a Jackie Chan or Stephen Chow movie. There is this one scene in the film that is hilarious – two of the ladies end up sharing a room together later in the film and one of the girl’s Dad walks in (they are scheduled to fight). The exchange there is priceless. So funny.

I’ve never played the video game DOA was based on, so I have no idea how good of a “video game” movie it is, but as a fun Mortal Kombat flick it rates highly in my book. It’s funny, it has some nice fight scenes, and it’s nice a short. It never takes itself seriously. I’m seriously considering picking it up at the used DVD store just so I can watch it again for a laugh or two. 

Rating: 4 Purrs for the ladies. That fight scene in the rain was very nice.