D.O.A. (1988)

After watching this, I realized I'd made a mistake by not watching the original 1950 movie this is a (loose) remake of first, since I found myself unsure what was original and what was drawn from the source material. So, naturally, I watched the original as well. This is only a review of the 1988 movie, as the original is set in summer and we have a reputation to uphold. Aside from the vague premise, the two movies don't have much in common. Even some elements I'd have sworn were pulled from the 1950 version weren't, such as dated character names and explicit noir tropes. My guess is this was intended as a love letter to the noir era in general. Perhaps the Christmas setting was a nod to one of the many holiday noirs, since it certainly wasn't taken from the 1950 film, which was set sometime during the hot summer months.

D.O.A. opens and closes with scenes shot in black and white that look and feel like something right out of a classic noir. In fact, the opening is one of the exceptions to this only loosely resembling its forebearer. This scene draws heavily from the 1950 version, albeit with some key modifications (the cops were portrayed as likable and competent in the original movie). The transitions between those and the neo-noir style of the rest of the film are ingenious and playful. Like Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley three decades later, this movie wants you to be aware it's an homage to a classic.

As a side note, co-directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel had a fascinating start to their careers, creating Max Headroom, making this, then directing the infamous live-action Super Mario Bros. movie. But don't hold that last one against them: D.O.A. is a cleverly scripted (by Charles Edward Pogue), visually engrossing mystery that plays with the history of its genre, as well as its holiday setting. This one's worth checking out.

The plot kicks off with a brief frame story of the film's protagonist, Dexter, an alcoholic writer turned English professor played by Dennis Quaid, stumbling into a police station to report a murder - his own. The scene transitions to a flashback to a few days earlier. We see him teaching and are quickly introduced to two of his students who will play significant roles in the plot: Nick (Robert Knepper) and Sydney (Meg Ryan). Both are fans of Dexter's writing, despite the fact he'd given up that pursuit years earlier and spiraled into a life of drinking that cost him his marriage to Gail (Jane Kaczmarek), and will soon cost him a great deal more. In passing, we're introduced to a few of his coworkers, as well, including Hal, played by Daniel Stern. For those keeping track, that means this features the future co-star of When Harry Met Sally, Lois from Malcolm in the Middle, and one of the Wet Bandits, all in one film.

Dexter still wants to reconcile with Gail, but she isn't willing to watch him continue deteriorating. Meanwhile his student Nick is obsessed with getting feedback on a novel he's written, but Dexter has no interest in reading a single word - that's his drinking time. Soon after, Nick falls to his death in an apparent suicide. Dexter also learns his wife had an affair with Nick, who - by the way - was being supported by a wealthy heiress who supposedly felt bad for Nick after the boy's father was killed in a supposedly botched robbery at her home.

Dexter runs into Cookie, the heiress's daughter, at a bar drinking away her sorrows - she'd been in love with Nick, too. She's forced to leave by her mother's servant, Bernard, who supposedly killed Nick's father in the aforementioned botched robbery (which you've probably guessed from the repetition of the word, "supposedly," is a cover story, but let's not get ahead of ourselves). Nick winds up drinking with Sydney, instead.

The next day, he wakes up feeling sick. He has some tests run, and Dexter learns that he's been poisoned and has roughly a day to live. He ignores recommendations to spend his time in the hospital and heads to his wife's house... just in time to see her bludgeoned to death by an unseen attacker. Dexter, still woozy from the poison and from something he was given by a doctor to help him relax, collapses unconscious.

He wakes up to discover he's a suspect in the murders of both his wife and Nick, who the police have learned was thrown off a roof. Desperate to find who's responsible in the limited amount of time he has left, Dexter begins interrogating anyone he suspects. He leaps to conclusions, attacking a few people as he tries to uncover the truth. At one point, he uses superglue to attach his hand to Sydney's arm to prevent her from getting away. This goes poorly, as you might expect - Sydney ends up with a pretty bad wound on her arm, and the two of them are almost shot with a nail gun.

Dexter heads off alone and winds up getting entangled further in the plot. He concludes (incorrectly) that the heiress was having an affair with Nick and had Bernard kill him and Gail out of jealously. Bernard subdues Nick and drives towards some nearby tar pits to dispose of him, but Cookie - who buys into Dexter's theory - shows up to rescue Dexter and kill Bernard in revenge. Cookie winds up getting inadvertently shot with Bernard's gun, and Bernard ends up going into the tar pit.

Sydney, having forgiven Dexter for the whole glue incident, finds him and sleeps with him. I get why this is here thematically (it's symbolic of Dexter's embrace of life in spite of his approaching demise), but it's a little distracting that no one asks if intercourse with someone who ingested a seemingly radioactive poison might be a bad idea. Also, there's that whole professor/student thing. Let's just move on.

Dexter returns to the home of the heiress demanding answers and learns pretty much his entire theory is off-base. She wasn't having an affair with Nick - unbeknownst to anyone, Nick was secretly her son, which is why she'd been horrified by the idea of her daughter and him starting a relationship. The robbery story was an attempt to cover up the truth: that she'd murdered Nick's father and her own husband when the truth nearly came out four years earlier. Now that both her children are dead, she has nothing left to live for, so she takes her own life.

Dexter realizes he's just spent most of his remaining time on Earth chasing down the wrong mystery. He returns to his office and discovers the residue of the poison in a cup he drank from earlier in the movie. He then confronts the man he'd been drinking with, Hal, who he'd considered a friend.

It turns out the lynchpin was the novel Nick wrote which Dexter never looked at. Hal had found a copy and decided it was worth killing over. But throwing Nick off the roof made Dexter resolve to actually read the damn book, which is why he was poisoned. Then, when Dexter left the manuscript in a bag at Gail's house, Hal decided he had to kill her, too.

Dexter and Hal fight, and Hal ends up shot and falling out a window. With nothing left to do, Dexter makes his way to the police station to tell his story. The movie ends with credits playing over a shot of Dexter walking down a hallway at the police station. As he approaches the end, he seems to vanish into a white light, symbolizing crossing over.

It's to the directors' credit that the ridiculously contrived story feels natural, thanks to the way the film leans on genre convention, framing the whole thing as a sort of nightmarish fantasy. Whether or not that was the motivation for the holiday setting, that's the primary way its leveraged throughout the film. The movie isn't really treating the holidays as sacred, so there's not much in the way of juxtaposition going on here. Likewise, there's very little nostalgia invoked, outside of a gift Dexter gives Gail (which she's later bludgeoned to death with, possibly as a repudiation of the overly sentimental relationship media has with the season).

D.O.A. is sort of an unconventional Christmas ghost story, since there's nothing supernatural about the ghost. But Dexter is still a proverbial dead man walking: even before the poisoning, the movie makes it clear he's been existing in a lifeless state. In an inversion of the surface narrative, this is a story of a ghost briefly regaining life and purpose. The ending, which seems to show him crossing into the light, serves to cap off this idea.

You could probably draw a connection between this and the whole James Frazer/Golden Bough thing, but it's admittedly a stretch. The parallels are mainly tied to elements and themes relatively common in noir in general and the movie this is a remake of specifically. The characters, plot, and even morals are different (the original was endorsing clean living, while this is more carpe diem), but the basic premise - a poisoned man with a day to solve his own murder - is the same.

Whichever of the holiday aspects you want to focus on, the movie makes for a fascinating Christmas film in the tradition of numerous noir films set during that season. It's also a good neo-noir in its own right, exploring a world without heroes (Dexter isn't even particularly likeable) where corruption always seems to fester and blossom into death and suffering. Personally, I love how it rides a line between reality and fantasy, where nothing supernatural is strictly occurring but there's a sense of unreality beneath the surface.