Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a review from Kiwi Tom. He calls the DOA movie a spiritual sequel to STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE. But in a good way. "It's shitty and awesome in all the ways that Street Fighter was, and in my opinion it's even shittier and more awesome." Now... that's something I can enjoy. We'll see! Here's the Kiwi!
I remember there was news and discussion here when the first trailer hit for this movie months ago, but when I saw it was coming soon to theatres here in Auckland, New Zealand I wondered why there was never a post regarding its American release. Maybe it was so awful that it went straight to DVD over there and bypassed everyone's attention.
It came out here yesterday and me and a friend felt like an honest to goodness shitty film and we saw it this afternoon.
Turns out for some reason that we Australasians got it first. I'm absolutely stumped as to why, but heres the world release schedule from imdb:
Australia 7 September 2006
Italy 8 September 2006
UK 15 September 2006
Hong Kong 21 September 2006
Turkey 22 September 2006
France 5 October 2006
Germany 5 October 2006
Finland 13 October 2006
Sweden 13 October 2006
USA 20 October 2006
Belgium 25 October 2006
Singapore 26 October 2006
Brazil 10 November 2006
Netherlands 21 December 2006
Anyway, the film - if you didn't know, based on a fighting game about girls with big tits- is a huge piece of shit. The most solidly entertaining piece of shit I've seen in a long time.
If you need any comparison, DOA is pretty much the spiritual sequel to Street Fighter: The Movie.
It's shitty and awesome in all the ways that Street Fighter was, and in my opinion it's even shittier and more awesome.
Not that it even matters, but the story goes:
A bunch of fighters from around the world get invited (via electronic throwing daggers tossed at them from nowhere while they're falling of cliffs or fighting pirates or some other related introductory action scene) to the annual DOA tournament held on 'DOA Island' where the winner collects 10 million dollars.
On the island they fight each other, play volleyball and walk around in bathing suits, until it becomes apparent that something sinister is afoot in this year's DOA!
It's about what you'd expect from the Dead Or Alive movie. Somehow it is a lot more simplistic and even more stupid than the game's storyline, and if you really cared, there are some things that might piss you off, like how Helena is a nice girl in her early 20s who really likes to rollerblade, doesn't sing opera and has no relationship with Christie at all.
On a far more important issue, the T&A in this film is just about as gratuitous as you can get in a PG-13.
There is a great scene early on where one character gets caught by the police with a bag full of stolen money. They catch her while she's getting out of the shower and she proceeds to beat four men up with her towel in slow motion, all the while her towel whips around barely obscuring the naughty bits of her naked body underneath.
Then later on two girls happen to fight in a downpour of rain while practically wearing nothing that isnt very clingy and soaking wet.
Apart from that there is a ton of plain old retarded shit.
The main plot revolves around Devon Aoki's shinobi ninja character Kasumi and her quest to find out what happened to her brother (also a ninja) who apparently died in the last tournament. Her brother's best friend (a ninja) also joins to protect her and she is followed to DOA Island by a purple haired ninja girl who is trying to kill her. All of these ninjas come from the same village in Japan. A village where nobody speaks Japanese and everyone has an American accent. Also the purple haired girl is somehow Caucasian.
You are introduced to Kasumi at the beginning of the film where she is cast out from her mountain top community for some reason I forgot and escapes 100 angry guards by jumping off a cliff and suddenly revealing a concealed pair of very modern gliding wings strapped to her back.
The whole movie is extremely silly like this, but it's great fun.
The fighting and action is pretty good and the filmmaking is slick enough in the flashy MTV visual and editing kind of way.
I'm pretty sure the film knows how retarded it is, but it doesn't push the fact like Snakes on a Plane did, the movie just set out to be light stupid entertainment without a big marketing push going HEY GUYS HEY INTERNET LOOK HERE WE'RE MAKING A SHITTY MOVIE ON PURPOSE AND ITS GONNA BE A CULT HIT SO WHEN YOU SEE THIS YOU SHOULD YELL THIS LINE AND THROW SHIT WEEEE HAHAHA, which is half the reason I didn't get that much of a kick out of SOAP when I eventually did see it.
I think this is a movie that people will just see out of curiosity and discover, which is really the only way you can make a "cult" movie.
The only real knowing wink to the fanbase I could see was this one annoying bumbling nerd character who works on the island and keeps trying to mack the girls. Someone who most of the game's fans could relate to I guess.
I think it's a great addition to the grand tradition of terrible videogame movies, but maybe I'm biased because I love most of these kinds of films dearly.
