Dead on Arrival (2017) has an intriguing premise. An innocent man learns he has been poisoned and has less than twenty-four hours to discover who poisoned him and why. This was the premise of D.O.A. (1949), starring Edmond O'Brien, and D.O.A. (1988), starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, and has been used in a few other minor productions.
The original film, which I haven't seen, won several accolades. The 1988 remake received mixed reviews, but I agree with Roger Ebert, who liked it. Unfortunately, DoA suffers from a weak script which repeats the superficial elements of the earlier films, but fails to incorporate the elements that made them memorable. Quaid's Dexter Cornell was poisoned because he knew something of no apparent significance. While searching for the truth, he learns that his life is actually much more intertwined with that of a second victim than he imagined. He must work essentially alone, because he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation, but manages to solve a series of crimes which baffled the police. In his final day of life, he experiences more passion than he had in the prior decade.
DoA has none of these deeper elements. Billy Flynn's Sam Collins is poisoned to advance a sinister plot that doesn't seem to have much chance of success. While the bodies pile up all around him, he has no relationship to most of them, other than having met them briefly the prior evening. He doesn't manage to solve the crime. Instead the dots are connected for him by another character. While there is a suggestion that he might survive the poison, he doesn't grow or mature during his final day.
For a film that seems to have been produced on a modest budget, the production values aren't bad. The actors do as well as can be expected with the material they're provided. The performances are probably the strongest element in a disappointing film.
