D.O.A. Reviews

Remaking a Hollywood classic always invites criticism from purists who hold the past dear, but occasionally improvements justify a remake. Such is the case with D.O.A., a remake (or, more exactly, a reworking) of the 1949 Rudolph Mate film noir that starred Edmond O'Brien and Pamela Britton--less a "classic" than a mediocre film with a classic premise. Here, the husband-and-wife directing team of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel and scriptwriter Charles Edward Pogue (PSYCHO III; THE FLY) have fashioned a murder mystery that both is modern and pays homage to a genre of the past. Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid) is a once-brilliant author who has retreated to the role of college professor. When he learns that he has been poisoned and has only hours to live, he enlists the aid of Sydney Fuller (Meg Ryan), a chipper, admiring student, in finding the person who poisoned him. The debut feature from Morton and Jankel, creators of the British television episodes of "Max Headroom," D.O.A. is a success on two levels--as a remake and on its own merits. They've kept the original's basic premise (a man looking for his own killer), but they've dressed it up for the 80s. Beneath the murder mystery is a morality tale that hinges on the college professor's obsession with the academic dictum "publish or perish." Photographed by Yuri Neyman (who did such memorable work on the cult film LIQUID SKY), D.O.A. is a creative barrage of images that makes great use of modern film techniques while harking back to many of the film noir visual schemes of the 1949 original.