Own the rights?
17 out of 19 people found the following review useful: Fantastic Sleeper Film., 5 April 2002 Author: Howlin Wolf from Oldham, Gtr Manchester, England.
"D.O.A" is an involving and entertaining little picture from start to finish. Dennis Quaid is at his caustic best; and Quaid is sadly one of the most underused talents in Hollywood. His then beau Meg Ryan also appears with him, but as is usually the case, doesn't really make much of an impact. The film is stylishly directed throughout, drawing on a number of influences to capture its 'seamy' feel. Would you credit that it's actually directed by two people? The answer is no. The whole thing is superbly slick, from its innovative camerawork to its unabashed use of black and white photography. All these elements help to keep proceedings fresh. Really the greatest thrill here is to be had with the dialogue, it's snappy yet intricate, doesn't waste a word and yet still manages to be entertaining. The screenplay for this is like a pocket work of art. This went unnoticed by me for ages before I finally caught it late at night. If this is the first you've heard about it, don't leave it like I did! Catch it soon, it really is top-notch... ! If you're in the mood for a solid genre flick that manages to surprise at every turn, this really fits the bill.
10 out of 11 people found the following review useful: Remake of a classic which just doesn't even come close to the required standard., 2 October 2004 Author: Jonathon Dabell (barnaby.rudge@hotmail.co.uk) from Wakefield, England
D.O.A has a good premise, borrowed from a 1950 film of the same name and a 1969 film entitled Color Me Dead. But beyond the premise it fails to develop into anything worthwhile. The script mistakes ludicrousness for cleverness; the directors peculiarly seem to think they're making a pop video rather than a film; and Dennis Quaid puts on a weird grin and raises his eyebrows maniacally as if he's auditioning as a Jack Nicholson impersonator. It's good for a laugh but, since that wasn't the original intention, it's hard to rate this as a worthwhile film.English lecturer Dexter Cornell (Quaid) is a bitter, bored shell of a man. Formerly a great author, he never recovered from the critical failure of his fourth and final novel and vowed never to write again. Without the drive of writing to fill his life, he gave up on everything else too, including his marriage and his dedication to the job. When pupil Nick Lang (Rob Knepper) apparently commits suicide after handing in an assignment, Cornell hits the booze to get over the shock. But soon thereafter, he learns that he has drunk a slow-acting poison, and that within 48 hours he will be dead. So close to death, he finally finds a renewed purpose in being alive.... as, aided by student Sydney Fuller (Meg Ryan), he desperately attempts to solve his own "murder".It's such a good idea that one can hardly imagine how it could fail. But it does. It really, really does fail in a big way. All the pointlessly fancy camera angles, all the inappropriate musical scoring, and especially the jaw-droppingly stupid solution to the mystery, conspire to ruin the film. D.O.A stands for "Dead On Arrival", and that's the perfect adjectival phrase for the entire film. Some day, this wonderful idea for a film might be used once again to better effect, but for now you'd be best advised to stick with the 1950 version.
6 out of 6 people found the following review useful: VASTLY UNDERRATED; QUAID IS EXCELLENT, 6 March 2003 Author: george.schmidt (george.schmidt@hbo.com) from fairview, nj
D.O.A. (1988) *** Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Charlotte Rampling, Daniel Stern. Fast-paced and nifty remake of the 1949 classic about a man being poisoned with time his factor as he tries to solve his own murder. Quaid is top-notch as a college English professor trying to figure out just who his enemies are and Ryan is plucky student aiding him. Cool camera movements and some fine direction from the creators of tv's "Max Headroom", Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel.
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful: A promising 'noir' remake, 30 January 2003 Author: RadicalTintin from Glasgow, Scotland
Those wishing to see film noir remakes, should not see this as as a remake, you will always be disappointed. Instead, enjoy a gripping performance from Dennis Quaid and visual imagery to commend. The colour drains from the film (literally, not metaphorically!)) as the plot gathers pace, and the dialogue is crisp and gritty. The opening dialogue is clever, and the viewer is carried along by a sharp screenplay and a real, original film noir feel,
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful: flawed remake of excellent 1950s classic, 31 August 2004 Author: ginger_sonny from London, England
Fast-paced remake of the exclellent 1949 film-noir. With Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan on fine, romantic form Quaid is the English professor who walks into a police station and reports a murder: his own. He has 24 hours to live after having been given poison, and is determined to use the remainder of his life to find his killer.This film is fast-paced and littered with corpses and more red herrings than Brixton market, but the direction and script never gel. Despite a competent and charming performance by Quaid, paired with his real-life wife-to-briefly-be Ryan (a romance necessarily also conducted at top speed), D.O.A. is let down by a cop-out ending.
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful: Sunk By The Script, 29 July 2003 Author: Theo Robertson from Isle Of Bute, Scotland
When I found out the two credited directors were responsible for MAX HEADROOM I was expecting some MTV over directed nightmare but the artistic style was nowhere as bad as I was expecting . Okay it is a somewhat 1980s type film with an intrusive pop soundtrack in places but a great many ( Too many ) films from that period suffered the same way , it`s by know means as bad or as shallow as something like THE FAST AND FURIOUS from years later The problem I had was with the script that lacks narritive drive for the first twenty minutes . It picks up in the middle but what really destroys the film is when the murderer is revealed at the end and he explains his motivations . " What ? " I cried almost falling out off my seat " You done that because .... " . Ridiculous doesn`t even begin to do it justiceStick to the original film noir classic
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful: The title says it all, 15 July 2008 Author: Prof-Hieronymos-Grost from Ireland
Rudolph Maté's film from 1950 is given a revamp for the 80's, Dexter Cornell(Dennis Quaid) is a university lecturer who used to have a successful writing career, but thats now gone down the tubes along with his marriage. The initial exposition plants the notion in the viewers mind that everybody has something against him, so when the revelation comes that he has been poisoned, we are not that surprised, unless of course you are familiar with the original. Dexter after being told he has less than 48hrs to live, decides to trace back his steps with the help of one of his students Sydney Fuller(Meg Ryan), but they find they have many obstacles in their way.The film begins promisingly in black and white, as Dexter staggers in the rain towards the local police station where he wishes to report a murder...his own, but the Huey lewis style 80's beat that accompanies this scene only serves to remove any sense of tension and tells the viewer that this is going to be pretty bad, its only a question of how bad? Sure enough we are soon using the old flashback medium, but now the film resorts to full Technicolor. There are some brief homages to Noir, as the embracing couple stand in front of a venetian blind, but there's really nothing here to recommend it, the performances are awful, Ryan in particular doing her usual dizzy blonde with a cutesy pie smile routine. The film is a lazy attempt to put some unneeded ooomph into an already fine movie premise, obviously trying to cash in one the Body Heat audience, the seeming results are undoubtedly aimed at a teen audience and to be sure, they are welcome to it. 4/10
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: Watch-able but overdone --Spoilers, 27 April 2003 Author: tostinati from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This film takes a lean, mean original and attacks it from the standpoint of the 80s/90s block-buster/Splurge Culture aesthetic, piling set pieces high as if more is more, and way too much is never quite enough.The first D.O.A., which was once some pretty over-the-top stuff, seems positively spare, Bergmanesque, compared to this late 80s Hollywood Baroque Garage Sale. Upholstered over the simple frame of the original film: a bloody, violent wife murder sub-plot; a nail gun attack in the dark; a car wreck into a nasty, burbling, all-engulfing slime pit with everyone scrambling to escape; a new motive for the protagonists murder, something or other about professional jealousy among writers (talk about your self-referring script); and a diffuse, wha-happen new arty ending.As watch-able as the film is, it is a little overdone. I guess when you aren't sure whether you can do one or two things really well, the best thing to do is crank out two dozen things, and hope at least a few of them will stick in the audience's mind. And why treat a movie like a short story -- everything toward one effect -- when you can make it like one of those sprawling 1200 page literary developments, the kind the drugstore sells?The music, again, irritates here, seeming jarring and incongruous in several places. And long, slow, lazy Tangerine Dream style synthesizer blares and wails, while evocative of a certain mood are also, perhaps even more, evocative of the early-mid 80s. 7 stars. I like this Quaid; he works in the role. After seeing it, I would say it is hard to imagine anyone else in Hollywood at the time playing this character with the right mix of vulnerability and near toughness.
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Incredible but true - brought to us by the folks who invented 'Max Headroom'!, 22 October 2006 Author: Scott LeBrun from Winnipeg, Canada
Dennis Quaid plays an English professor who discovers that he has been secretly given a toxin that will kill him within 48 hours; with the help of cutie-pie coed Meg Ryan (the former real-life couple had previously worked together in Joe Dante's "Innerspace"), he plays amateur sleuth to find out who might hate him enough to want to do this.A *very* modern (well, 1980's era modern) spin on a well loved and highly revered film noir classic, 1988's "D.O.A." is of course nothing like old-fashioned film noir. Subtle it's not, with its' often rock video style direction and editing. I actually kind of liked its little twists and turns, although, in retrospect, the red herrings *do* come off as obvious and waste a little too much of the film's time. (As a result, the final revelation and climax play rather anticlimactically.) Even with its flaws, I find it fairly entertaining. It might be more flashier than it really needs to be (the story is good enough to not warrant so much glitz), but it moves well and at the least, well, I can't say that it's boring. Quaid is good, Ryan likable, and the fine supporting cast includes future 'Malcolm in the Middle' mom Jane Kaczmarek, Christopher Neame, Robin Johnson (this appears to have been her final film), Jay Patterson, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Kehoe, and the late Brion James. The now familiar John Hawkes ("The Perfect Storm", 'Deadwood') has a tiny role as a student, and horror fans can take note that that's Bill Johnson - who took over the role of Leatherface from Gunnar Hansen in the second "Chainsaw" movie - as the desk sergeant in the beginning.It's not memorable in any way, but it's an acceptable diversion.Filmed mostly in color (on location in Austin, Texas), although the film is book-ended with black-and-white scenes. It actually would have been a little neater had it been shot entirely in black-and-white (that, at least, would have been a respectful tip of the hat to vintage film noir), but it basically works out all right.6/10
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Pretty good update of the original film, with good performances., 8 January 2006 Author: Diego Sada Jr (dsadajr@gmail.com) from Monterrey, Mexico
OK, so this film may not have won any Oscars, but it is not a bad film. The original "D.O.A." is undoubtedly a better film, but that does not mean this film is bad.The film stars Dennis Quaid in one of his early roles, when he was first becoming really famous, after "The Right Stuff" made him a star, and a very lovely looking Meg Ryan, when she was still now quite famous.This is more of an "update" of the 1950 film, rather than a remake, since the setting is different and the characters too, are different. The plot is pretty much the same. A man (this time an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin) is poisoned and he has only 24 hours to find out who poisoned him and why. Meg Ryan plays a young college student who tries to help him. Jane Kaczmarek plays Quaid's estranged wife, in a low key, but intense performance; she steals every scene she is in. Daniel Stern (also in an early role, before "Home Alone" made him famous) plays Quaid's colleague. Charlotte Rampling is fine too in a supporting role.The entire cast is top notch; The film is stylish, with a quick pace that keeps you guessing until the end. I think this is a film that is certainly worth watching as a thriller, and as a modern version of a classic film.
Add another review
