D.O.A. film poster
With a face as weathered as time itself, Frank Bigelow trudges up the steps of a police station and drags himself down the corridor to Homicide. The detective greeting him arches his brow when Frank reports a murder—adding that the victim is Frank himself.
Film buffs will immediately recognize the set-up: It’s a remake of DOA (1950), a modestly budgeted thriller that took noir down the darkest blind alley. John Doe, bassist and co-front person from the trail-blazing band X, stars as Frank in the new remake by indie director Kurt St. Thomas.
Doe has all the hardboiled moves down pat as he recites his voiceovers and delivers terse replies to the miscreants encountered along the way. As in the original DOA, the new film is largely a long flashback framed by Frank’s final statement at police headquarters. St. Thomas filmed his DOA in black and white, maintaining much of the original visual tone through cinematography and meticulously furnished period details and artifacts. Every item on screen looks as if manufactured in or before 1950. Likewise, DOA’s screenplay recreates the cut-the-crap ethos of war-toughened men who had no more time for fancy words and malarky.
The supporting cast members are varied in their skill, but the same can be said of the original DOA. In both versions, Frank is poisoned by iridium slipped into a drink at a disreputable nightclub. In the 1950 DOA, Frank is an accountant, a hapless paper pusher who stumbles blindly into a plot of byzantine complexity. He’s a victim of fate. The remake is disappointing for making Frank a private eye, a stock noir figure, the tough guy with a heart pursuing a hard case, dropping a string of clues through a labyrinth of criminals crossing each other. The original was more satisfying for being more dizzying, more disorienting.
But all told, the new DOA is an enjoyable two hours for noir buffs—and good to see John Doe as the hero in a world gone amok.
Rent or buy the new version of DOA or the 1950 orginal on Amazon.
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