I'm going to start out with what I think was done right in this movie, and don't worry, the list is short. It remains true to the standard of fan service the game franchise has established, particularly in regard to DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball (did you say DOA or T&A?). They even had a beach volleyball scene. Oh, wait, I think that's it. The script was bad, the choreography was bad, the story was bad, the casting was bad, the directing was bad, and my decision to watch this movie was bad.I started laughing at (not with) this movie very early on, when I noticed that the script seemed to have mistakenly used "shinobi" instead of "ronin". I wanted to strangle a kitten when I noticed that Hayabusa not only didn't look the part, but didn't act the part. Hayabusa is awesome. He's the protagonist of Ninja Gaiden. He is totally super-awesome, and you don't mess with him. He's not supposed to be a whiny bitch. I wanted to harpoon a whale when I discovered that the bubbly girl on in-line skates was Helena instead of, you know, being a French opera singer, master of Pi Qua Quan.
The wire work was unnatural, as well as unrelenting, so it's really hard to ignore the mistakes. It's one thing to have someone jump up to a ledge 10 feet above them, but it's another thing entirely to have them do it without the use of their legs. This movie seemed to be trying too hard to be Black Mask when it should have simply tried harder to be DOA.
Things just went downhill as the plot progressed. Seriously, WTF tactical sunglasses!? I mean, really, WTF!? I don't even know where to start with that.
My biggest grievance is toward how this film failed completely as a VG adaptation. From spending a great many hours playing (and loving) Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, I probably had much greater expectations of the combat in this movie than most people, but it didn't really meet any of them. In the games, every character has their own unique combat style, and they have a collection of awesome signature moves. Is that what you get in the movie? No. You get everyone pretty much doing the same thing, regardless of their background (Tina is a wrestler, not a black belt). You get a camera that's spending more time focused on the fighters' faces than their moves. Just once, I wanted to have 10 seconds where I felt like I was watching a live-action version of one of my favorite fighting games. I never got those 10 seconds. At least Doom had a few minutes of FPS action, and at least Resident Evil had Milla Jovovich. I think the only reason I was able to sit through the entire movie was because of my soft spot for that ice-queen Ayane, but ultimately, even she let me down (don't worry, Natassia, it wasn't your fault, neither was Bloodrayne). I guess it's time to break out the PS2; it's going to take weeks of DOA2 to repair the damage this movie has done.
If you ever have a compulsion to watch this movie, just watch House of Flying Daggers instead. It doesn't suck.
It has been a really long time since I have seen this movie, and, given the quality of film, it sticks out in my head about as much as my last meal with Seph. In my mind, the movies only redeeming factor was that it was not directed by Uwe Boll. Even a few lines that could have been quipy or at least fun, couldn't even pull that off. The only thing that I can recall the movie had in common with the game besides the character names is that Zack bugged me in both, which isn't saying much; in the games, Wilson trounces me with Zack wearing the silver teletubby outfit. In the movie, all the characters bugged me. Even Sarah Carter, who played one of my favorite minor character in the early years of Smallville, was terrible for her role. I am not too familiar with the back story of most of these characters, consider my experience of the game limited to unlocking the costumes and spend hundreds of hours fighting Wilson, but I did know enough to know that the writers got maybe one or two adjectives about each character before they got to work. And, obviously, that just doesn't work. If you write movies for the average movie go-er, with as much knowledge of the subject as the average movie go-er, you will just piss off %100 of the fans, ever single time. This is one of the special movies that I am glad to say we don't carry at my job.
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