20130904: Action Review--DNA 1997

Name: DNA (1997)
IMDb: link to DNA page

Genres: Action, SciFi  Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Mark Dacascos as Dr. Ash Mattley; Jurgen Prochnow as Dr. Carl Wessinger; Robin McKee as CIA operative Clair Summers;  as Roger Aaron Brown as Loren Azenfel.

Directed by: William R. Mesa.   Written by: Nick Davis.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Carl excavates bones in northern Borneo, and discovers how to extract DNA from the bones.  He's short an enzyme or two to complete the process of regenerating an animal from the DNA.  He turns to Ash, who runs an underfunded clinic in Sarawak, Malaysia.  Ash had been in mainstream medical researcher, but was run out when he could not complete his discoveries about immune-boosting enzymes.  Carl supplies the missing link in Ash's work, and suggests an expedition into the jungles to get enough rare beetles to make enough enzymes to prove the discovery, and make a lot of money from the medical/pharmaceutical industry.

Delineation of conflicts:
The expedition goes well for Carl, but not so much for Ash.

Two years later, Clair comes to Ash to help identify the cause of death of several mutilated bodies.  The answer is the presence of the Balakai, the creature Carl had wanted to revive. The second expedition with Clair is much less well-prepared, and looks doomed from the start. They find the monster soon enough, and what is left of Carl's party.

Not much after that, the film goes through a shift.  Carl describes the monster as an alien.  When met in the outdoors, the monster is a skilled alien hunter (style of Predator) capable of invisibility on command.  Its appearance is a bit like the alien in Alien.  Ash does some rituals with locals, then goes after the alien.

Resolution: The ending is rather flat, given all the 'borrowings' from other films.
 
One line summary: Fools resurrect alien monster in a derivative film.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually OK, but suffers from darkness and graininess.

Sound: 8/10 The incidental music is a bit florid, but the recording is well done.

Acting: 3/10 Mark Dacascos and Robin McKee were just plain bad.  Both are miscast, which makes matters worse. Veteran actors Jurgen Prochnow and Roger Aaron Brown were better, but had to deal with the mediocre script.

Screenplay: 5/10  Supposedly set in Malaysia, but some of the 'natives' use language one might find in the Philippines, where the filming was done.  The expedition early on in the film had a Raiders of the Lost Ark feel to it, with a dash of King Solomon's Mines during the meetings with the locals.  Perhaps the worst motivational piece was Carl asserting that many countries would pay large amounts of money for this bio-weapon.  Please!  They could not control it in the least, just as nothing could control the alien killers in Alien or its sequels.  There is no military application here, so no source of money. If they had kept with the idea of immunity-enhancing enzymes, the film would have been more coherent.

Special Effects: 5/10 The monster, at least outside, was clearly a not-so-good man in a rubber suit.  The helicopter crashes and explosions were between so-so and poor.

Final Rating: Three of ten.  Too many holes in the plot, even for a creature feature.