10 Movie Flops You've Probably Forgotten
3. DOA Dead Or Alive
Like Charlie’s Angels, this is a a showcase for the charms of its three leads, but whereas that movie had Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, DOA gives us Devon Aoki (Sin City) as a hangliding ninja princess, Jamie Pressly (My Name Is Earl) as a lady wrestler plus singer Holly Valance (Taken) as an assassin/master thief.
They’ve been invited to “the World’s greatest fighting tournament”, but even though there’s $10m at stake they spend most of the time playing volleyball, lounging around by the pool or playing practical jokes. With its pounding score, smash cut editing and CG-heavy fight sequences, you’d never guess that DOA was directed by Corey Yuen, one of Hong Kong’s top action choreographers, but even he can’t breathe much life into a picture whose $21 million budget presumably went on stylists and fitness trainers.
US audiences were smart enough to steer clear of this megabomb, and when Dimension sneaked it into theaters in the summer of 2007, the movie made barely $500,000.