Dead or Alive

BIKINI KOMBAT!!! Baywatch meets The Shaw Brothers and the result is a 100% brainless affair that redefines the term "shit" and becomes a hot candidate for inclusion in www.badmovies.org. Unfortunately, the overly dense frequency of brawls makes DOA a rather monotonous affair as time goes on. I enjoyed it's stepsibling, Paul W.S. Anderson's visually much more sophisticated Mortal Kombat (Anderson co-produced DOA), infinitely more, even though it was really about the same thing. (24.01.2007)

Stylish brainwash fun that squeezed the video game spirit to the last byte and let it be transformed into an uncompromising action blast that brings back memories of the Mortal Kombat days, which was once pleasing to the eyes of fans who loved the genre. Scantily clad ladies fight at an impressive pace in a masterfully filmed, edited, and musically underscored fetish that will leave five out of four erotomaniacs drooling with bliss. A highly artistic experience and a must for anyone who grew up with a joystick in their hand and when their parents took it away from them, they went to flip through Esquire. (03.02.2007)

There are good movies. There are bad movies too. There are amusing B-movies. There are even movies that are so bad that it makes them good. And then there are projects that not even an elephant dose of hyperbole has the least chance to help. And then there is DOA: Dead or Alive. Beautiful girls, unbelievably over the top action scenes, beautiful chicks, the worst possible editing, gorgeous babes, funny dialogs and so on and so forth. I think you get it. Dead or Alive is simply a movie that eludes categorization. (15.01.2008)

Eine unglaublich verrückte und gleichzeitig unterhaltsame Angelegenheit. Heftige Prügeleien von schönen Mädchen und Kerlen, praktisch ohne Handlung, mit Witzen… Die Actionszenen (die 90% des Films bilden) sind sehr einfallsreich und originell. Sie werden den Zuschauer*innen in einer schönen Verpackung serviert (meine Lieblingsszene ist der Kampf im Bambuswald). Der Film hat die ganze Zeit Schwung. Das Ende kommt nach knapp neunzig Minuten, was genau die richtige Laufzeit ist. Wenn Dead or Alive ein paar Minuten länger gewesen wäre, hätte ich ihn als langwierig empfunden. Im Rahmen der B-Movies ist es definitiv ein überdurchschnittlicher Film. (21.03.2010)

Thanks to the action, which is sometimes so beautifully crazy that it's just awesome, I really enjoyed the movie. Plus there's Jaime Pressly, who I have a soft spot for for some reason. I guess that reason is My Name Is Earl. The story is quite simple and didn't really entertain me much, but the fights and characters are solid here, and the whole movie is pleasantly macho. (12.11.2016)