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Rudolph Maté’s 1950 film noir thriller, D.O.A., isn’t considered a classic, but its status has grown over the decades because it has been remade several times, with the most recent update set to be released on November 11, 2022. Its premise is a fatally poisoned man tries to solve the mystery of who has poisoned him. It is an appealing one for filmmakers to take on, so it has been re-incarnated as the movies Eddie Davis’ Color Me Dead (1969), Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel’s D.O.A. (1988), Stephen Cyrus Sepher’s Dead On Arrival (2017), and now, Kurt St. Thomas’s adaptation, D.O.A., which in its trailer presents itself as the most faithful remake as a black and white period piece.
Actor/musician John Doe (X, Road House) plays Detective Frank Bigelow, who introduces himself in the first few seconds of the dark, shadowy trailer. He tells us in voice-over while, the haggard gumshoe is drinking at a bar, that he has a story. “Maybe it’s a confession, too,” he continues as we see him stumbling down a hallway. “I’ll leave that up to the police – whatever it is, it won’t surprise me.”
We see Doe’s Bigelow peering through mini-binoculars at men in suits at a cemetery. We cut to a glamour shot of Paola Duque walking on stage to a microphone at a nightclub, then to a close-up of a sinister bigwig portrayed by Kevin Crowley saying, “You don’t know what you walked into, Bigelow,” to our plagued protagonist reply of, “Illuminate me.”
The Plot and the Poison Thickens
The next quick sequence of shots illuminates that Detective Bigelow is sick as he throws up from his car door. We get the diagnosis from a doctor (Jan Harrelson), “You’ve been poisoned,” to Frank’s grizzled question, “Are you saying this is gonna kill me?” Another shot of the dolled-up Dogue saying, “You’re scared, aren’t you?” then the plot thickens as we see Bigelow getting roughed up and told by an assailant, “Don’t fight it, it’ll go quicker.”
Back at the dark bar, Lucinda Janney, in a tight close-up, asks Frank, “What are you gonna do?” Finally summoning a fierce, determined manner, Frank answers, “Find out why.” As the strings in the accompanying music intensify, we see Frank take control and go deep into the complicated shadows to find his murderer. “You’ve been dealt a bad deal,” sternly states a barber played by actor/comedian John Byner. “So don’t make it worse,” Byner advises over a shot of Frank walking through stacked chairs in what looks like the nightclub seen previously.
Then we get an unexpected cameo from Matt Pinfield, best known as an MTV VJ in the ‘90s, who hosted the popular late-night alternative program 120 Minutes. Pinfield appears in a close-up as another questionable character who asks how long Frank has before he expires. “A couple days, a week at most – if I stay quiet.” Pinfield responds in a gruff, scary intonation, “But you haven’t stayed quiet, have you?”
A montage of strained imagery follows with Frank on the run, having his head shoved into a toilet, Big Lebowski-style, and being beaten up again. The doctor says, “the more you exert yourself, the faster it’s going to burn,” and another visit with Byner, who smugly tells the camera, “Great thing about this country – there’s always more.”
The trailer concludes with a voice saying, “When your time’s up, your time’s up,” while gunshots are fired, alligators passing each other in a stream, and Frank, in yet another strained close-up, wearily blurts, “I’m not a corpse, promise.”
A Reimagining of D.O.A. with Original Elements
D.O.A.’s trailer, which also includes notices of its Official Selection at the Montreal Independent Film Festival, the Vegas Movie Awards, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Awards, promises a retro affair with its old-fashioned look and recreation of ‘50s style nuances.
This is in stark contrast to the previous remakes of D.O.A., which updated the story to their respective times, most notably in Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel’s 1988 version, which starred Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan and dealt with the world of publishing and academia instead of hard-boiled shamus stuff. The 2017 reimagining of Dead on Arrival centered on a pharmaceutical salesman played by D.B. Sweeney. It failed to make much of a splash, so this new adaptation could re-establish D.O.A.’s stature in film history.
But while the script for the new D.O.A., written by Nicholas Griffin (Matchstick Men, FX’s Terriers), shares the title and premise with the original 1950 movie, most of the plot elements are original. Director Thomas may put his own stamp on the project giving the premise a new life while introducing new generations to film noir. The highly anticipated film’s one-minute and 30-second trailer sure makes a case for that possibility.
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