Now I remember where I last saw Eric Roberts as the villain, just before The Expendables: it was in Corey Yuen’s D.O.A.: Dead Or Alive, just three or four years before. But Roberts is hardly the reason to see this film (though he executes some improbable moves, obviously with the help of body doubles made extra-oily to be accurate). Dead Or Alive is based on a videogame that pits different combatants against each other in a Street Fighter-style tournament. But the contest is moot, really; we know the last people standing will be Jaime Pressly, Devon Aoki and Holly Valance, none of which I’d ever seen in a movie then or since.
Dead Or Alive neither imbues no larger social relevance in the cultural diversity of its characters and their fighting skills, has no ambitions about redefining the martial arts genre, nor makes no attempts at signifying any greater meaning other than its own ludicrousness. This is a very good thing. There’s an overarching narrative about families and revenge, but who cares when there’s an extended beach volleyball scene featuring the whole female cast in bikinis? Yuen’s real talent isn’t in coaxing believable performances from his actors (though the acting is actually passable); it’s in choreographing acrobatic fight scenes that maximize both bone-crunch and boob-jiggle. Summer is almost over, but that doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze in one last video rental and watch something mindless and fun before the fall begins and the Oscar dramas start crowding the multiplexes. If I had seen this when I was, say, fourteen, this would have been formative.
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