DOA : Dead or Alive The Movie Recap: Part 4

Weatherby tries to stop this download in what's supposed to be a tense race against time. It isn't. He’s typing away furiously while it looks like poor Britney-Helena’s eyes have gone glazed from all the flashing lights and over stimulation.

Predictably, Weatherby manages to stop the download in the nick of time. Curiously enough, instead of just stopping like how normal download bars do, this one goes right back down to zero percent with a shut down sound effect. Which is again, the creators thinking we have brains the sizes of walnuts and can’t tell when a download has been terminated unless it goes all the way back down. This is despite the download screen actually saying “TRANSMISSION TERMINATED” in bold capital letters.


Even he feels patronised.


Weatherby reports Pervology to the CIA, and the doctor’s computer screen actually flashes: “CIA ALERTED”. What if Weatherby had chosen to contact the NYPD, or the LAPD or Scotland Yard or any police force the world over? Would it have said they were alerted too? How does the computer even know that they were alerted? Even if the computer does somehow know this, it was Weatherby and Fame Douglas, not Pervology who set up and built these computer systems. Why would they feel the need to install a “CIA ALERTED” alarm in their computer if they thought everything was above board? Did they know that Pervology would betray them and hatch a mad scheme when they set up the computer systems on the island? And who do they think the CIA are? Some kind of instant response unit?

*CIA agent opens his email*

To: CIA.gov
From: DOAtournament.com
Subject: HELP!

Dr Victor Donovan has evil sunshades and nanobots! And he put them in the fighters! He's harvested their moves and he's selling the sunshades to bad guys around the world! He's coming after me! MOMMY! DO SOMETHING!

- Weatherby.

----

*CIA agent rushes to the CIA Director*

Director - What's this? Send out an armed response on the double! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!!!

Pervology is heading Weatherby’s way in a nice leisurely jog. Britney-Helena, eager to test her Super Freak  powers, rushes off to face Dr. Pervology Uberhax Demigod in single combat. The explanation they give is that she doesn’t have “the nanobots” in her, however seeing how none of this should be working anyway, I’m sticking to my explanation. It makes a thousand times more sense.

Meanwhile Max opens the vault, but as he’s wearing a woman’s cat suit, there are no shoes for him to throw and he get’s quickly knocked out by Gayman. I mean Bayman.

Truly Hayate is the greatest fighter among men, but alas he is not the chosen one, and where he fails abysmally, Super Britney-Helena 2 actually lands an impressive hit on Dr Pervology Uberhax Demigod, who summarily leaves to go pick on a weakling.

That weakling being Weatherby.






He take’s Weatherby’s "life’s work" after knocking him out and starts the self destruct sequence; as per usual in these kinds of movies that all rip off the James Bond third act formula, because the CIA are coming, see? After Pervology leaves, Weatherby with his last ounce of strength, opens the “harvest pods” containing the other “fighters”. Which makes you wonder why he couldn’t have done that in the first place.

Anyhoo, they all naturally try to fight The Pervology Demigod but he leaves it to his number two (pun intended) Bayman, who like a typical movie henchman with no sense of self preservation, stands there and growls at our zeroes like he's an attack dog. Despite there being a ticking countdown to self destruct.

Dr Pervology demigod then flies to the other side of his tower. Those shades give him flying power now? If he starts shooting red lasers from his eyes then I’m out of here.

Then we see Christie and the others flying after him. Why movie? Why? When we’re so close to the end?

Mullet stays behind to get beaten up by Bayman as he's not a girl. Something I had to do a double take to find out. All four girls, Kasumi, Christie, Tina and Super Britney-Helena 2 decide to confront The Pervology Demigod for the final climactic fight. At last. Pervology Demigod, like a true genre-blind muppet, decides to stay and take them all on by himself. Why is he bothering with that? When it’s already been proven that Super Britney-Helena 2 can take him on all by herself, and he has everything he needs. So what’s he staying for? Pride? If he can only just about beat one of the girls, than what makes him think he can beat that girl with three others helping her? It’s suicide.

Pervology fights in increasingly silly and desperate ways. Mullet get’s beaten up some more, and a now recovered Weatherby can’t stop the self destruct sequence. What happened Weatherby? I thought you were “on it”? I’m so disappointed in you. Remember Max? Or Zack? Wiggy or Hayate? Me neither. They’ve conveniently fallen off the face of the earth for this final fight.



Eyecatching title, but the reviewer should work on his English.


The Pervology Demigod drunkenly balances on a wooden ladder above a five hundred foot death drop. The girls try to take his legs with Devon Aoki, I mean another ladder, and he leaps on top of that too. I didn’t know sun shades give you such amazing balance. I wonder why more gymnasts don’t wear them.

Tina decides to try her luck and charges in, but she’s just a wrestler and quickly gets herself into trouble. Yikes, her legs get more tangled than the wires of my gaming consoles. Devon Aoki has had enough and decides that no mere ladders are going to show her woodenness up. So she dives in and impersonates a ladder. Word.

The girls then swing chains (!) at Pervology Demigod. Won‘t this jackass die already?

The ladders break and Pervology holds onto the chains because of his super human wanking arms. Kasumi and Tina, fall. Is it too much to hope to their death?

Well of course it is, because Hayate and Wiggy finally show up after a good ten minutes doing it in the corner. They brandish ladders and stop the girl’s fall, although with their weight and at that velocity they would smash right through the ladders and keep on falling.

Unsurprisingly, Mullet’s still getting his licking and is being choked to death, but miraculously saved by Weatherby and Max(!). The tedious trio make for the exit.

It finally happens. What Logic said should have happened from the very beginning of the fight. The shades slip off and Pervology Uberhax Demigod, reverts back to plain old Pervology. Why? Was that single a piece of nonsense hardware really responsible for the sheer godliness of the past fifteen minutes? I guess so, as now he’s as boned as a Christmas turkey.



Curses! And my plan was so well thought out!


Hayate cripples him, and we gratuitously see what’s going on inside Pervology’s foot, red blood cells and all, because CGI was feeling a bit left out. Kasumi being a piece of wood herself, runs up a wooden pillar, takes out one of her fancy acupuncture needles from her wrist ribbon and jabs Pervology in the back, completely paralysing him. That’s right, she paralyses a crippled man. How very necessary, especially considering there’s a self destruct countdown.

Ten seconds to go and with no chance of escaping, Weatherby asks the screenwriter if he can contrive a super fun happy slide right next to him that leads outside. The screenwriter, ever looking for a chance to make the movie worse, happily obliges.

All the main characters escape, having learned nothing at all from the experience. I can describe their escape in three words. Big, dumb and loud.

Big - The tower is greatly oversized.

Dumb - They dive five hundred feet off the tower into water. Not one character sustains even minor injury from it.

Loud - Explosions are loud.

The tower falls and not one character is hurt by the debris. Which is unsurprising as computer images can’t hurt people.

As the epilogue begins, we see that the same pirates from before who got beaten by Tina are back. Which given the vastness of the ocean, is almost impossible. This time they actually remembered to keep their props, I mean guns, on them. They survey the wreckage and find a woman lying face down on Devon Aoki -or a raft and he turns the woman around to find Tina. The pirate captain emits a pansy “Oh no!”. Gee guy, you have machine guns and she's unarmed. Your advantage can’t get any more insurmountable. The movie cheats again and has Tina beat all of them off camera, because it knows that there’s no way in hell they could show that fight without us, the audience, laughing our asses off. Even if all of her friends joined in it would be no contest once the bullets started flying. Guns in general have been mysteriously absent here. They’re simply never used. In Enter the Dragon, this was justified, here it’s yet another plot hole.

OOHHH!! COOTIES!!

A montage, reminding us of some of the movie’s low points plays among “edgy“ rock music, as if we remotely needed that.

Cut to “ONE WEEK LATER, BACK AT KASUMI’S PALACE”. Oh, so it’s Kasumi’s palace? Where are her parents and why is she still a princess? Why would a princess need her own palace? Do these people give all their sons and daughters palaces each when they aren’t even the recognised royalty of Japan? How self important can they get?

Because it's such a natural thing to say in this situation, Britney Helena then asks; “Don’t you think that guy in the second row is cute?”. What’s that supposed to mean? Is anyone supposed to know who or what you’re talking about you lunatic? I’ll indulge you. Yes. Yes he is. Now back in your cell. Glad to know that she’s only dated Weatherby one week and she’s already thinking about other men. 

Christie then asks “Is there any guy you don’t have a crush on?”. The answer is no, there isn't.

We then see that the girls are armed with katana swords and are being charged by some three hundred armed men. As usual, there are several problems with this.

Firstly, they are positioned at the top of the stairs in Kasumi’s palace. Meaning that the guards would have had to of let them in. Why? Wouldn’t they have tried to kill Kasumi on sight for leaving the clan?

Secondly, we see that Wiggy is with them and on the girl’s side. Which is bewildering because it was her task to hunt and kill Kasumi for the clan. At what point did she have a complete role reversal and decide to help Kasumi? They have not had one nice thing to say about each other since this movie began, so what‘s the deal? Wiggy’s fierce loyalty to the clan, even at the expense of reason, has been her defining trait thus far. This character U turn is so fast and baffling that it makes any viewer go dizzy and weak at the knees.

Thirdly, where’s Hayate and Mullet? Jerking each other off somewhere? One would think they, being both highly protective of Kasumi, would want in on this impossible battle.

Fourthly, that’s just it. This battle is impossible. There is no possible way that five people can survive a frontal assault against three hundred, yet each one of these girls act completely unconcerned about their imminent deaths. They're either supremely confident in their martial skills or too slow to know when their lives are in danger. This is the latter.

Fifthly, since when are Tina, Christie and Britney-Helena trained to use katana swords? Entertainment wrestlers really get schooling in Samurai swords before they’re allowed in the ring? Who knew? What use is mastery of a katana blade to a professional thief, or whatever the hell it is Britney-Helena does for a living? These three are so untrained that they’re likely to impale themselves as soon as the fight begins.

I can sum it all up quite nicely. The director, clearly fed up with the screenplay, actors and production, has effectively said “Rocks fall, everybody dies.” with this scene.



At least they didn't sequel bait...


With that the credits roll and thankfully I’m done and will never watch this abomination again .

Wait a minute! Hold everything! That’s the end?

They’re seriously not going to show us how they got the nanobots out of their systems? One of the most basic rules of screenwriting is that what’s set in motion, stays in motion until it’s paid off. This is never paid off in the movie and as per the rules of filmmaking 101, all the fighters who have attended the DOA tournament still have the nanobots in their bodies and have made no attempt to get rid of them. This will very likely expose them to chronic poisoning by heavy metal ions, eventual cancer by the radiation that these things have to be giving off and stroke.

What do they care. Theyre about to be killed by three hundred guards. Those same guards who did nothing to stop Kasumi from leaving, but now that she's returned, all want to kill her.

That poor cricket.