Tweet

Comments (0)

 1 of 3

Domino Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity and drug us) Genre: Action Theater release: October 14, 2005 by New Line Cinema Directed by: Tony Scott Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes Cast: Keira Knightley (Domino Harvey), Mickey Rourke (Ed), Edgar Ramirez (Choco), Delroy Lindo (Claremont Williams), Lucy Liu (Taryn Miles), Christopher Walken (Mark Heiss), Mena Suvari (Kimmie), Dabney Coleman (Drake Bishop), Mo'Nique (Lateesha), Jacqueline Bisset (Paulene Stone) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Give Domino credit for honesty, sort of. The film begins, as so many do, by saying that it is based on a true story. Then two extra words appear on screen: "sort of." That seems like fair warning. The film, which concerns a movie star's daughter who became a bounty hunter, is written by Richard Kelly, who wrote and directed the trippy cult hit Donnie Darko, and it is directed by the always hyper-stylish Tony Scott, who never saw a jump cut, a freeze frame, a saturated color or a gratuitous subtitle he didn't like. You know how the dialogue in Scott's last film, Man on Fire, was sometimes echoed on the soundtrack or spelled out on the screen, just to make sure we didn't miss it? Domino repeats these tricks, and more. So we don't exactly enter the theatre expecting authenticity or realism.

Keira Knightley stars as model-turned-bounty-hunter Domino Harvey

Still, if every movie that claims to be based on a true story contains a strong dose of fiction, then it stands to reason that a movie that claims to be only "sort of" based on a true story will be practically nothing but fiction. And that does seem to be the case here. The real Domino Harvey would have been 36 now if she had not died of a drug overdose a few months ago, but the movie version is barely out of her teens—just like the actress who plays her, 20-year-old Keira Knightley. Domino's father, Laurence Harvey—best known for starring in A Room at the Top, which ushered in the New Wave of British cinema, and for co-starring in Hollywood films like the original version of The Manchurian Candidate—died when Domino was just a girl, and that fact, at least, survives into the film. But the film dates his death to the early 1990s, some two decades after it actually took place.

And that's before we get to the story, which throws in so much made-up material it begins to seem like lots of other films—particularly those directed by Guy Ritchie, Oliver Stone and, well, Tony Scott—and whatever pure human truth we might have gleaned from Domino's story is lost in all the sound and fury. Scott and Kelly say they have exaggerated certain facts about Domino's life in order to take us into her rebellious, punk-influenced, fever-dream state of mind. Too bad, then, that her mind was so much like a movie.

Domino has some words for Taryn (Lucy Liu)

Actually, it's worse than a movie—it's television. Domino tells us that her mother (played by Jacqueline Bisset) moved with her to California after falling for the culture or lifestyle depicted on Beverly Hills 90210. Later, after scrapping with a fellow model and a sorority girl, Domino takes up bounty hunting, under the tutelage of two mysterious figures named Ed (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez)—and it isn't long before Christopher Walken shows up as a quirky, driven TV producer who hopes to create a "reality TV" series based on their adventures, like a sexier, edgier version of Cops. He even casts former 90210 regulars Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green as hosts; and thus this film blurs the line between fact and fiction even more, since the two real-life "celebrities" poke fun at their own images by playing spiteful, clueless versions of themselves. (The bounty hunters can't stand them.) There is even a bit of social commentary, when one character with strong opinions about race relations appears on a typically feisty episode of Jerry Springer.

Mickey Rourke as Ed Moseby, one of Domino's fellow bounty hunters

The restless editing so typical of television is compounded here by smaller, fleeting details, like Scott's cutaways to intense close-ups of Domino's rear cleavage, a string of saliva hanging between a person's mouth and her straw, and similar images. And then there is the music, which makes abrupt shifts in tone from soft and sensitive to bumpy and gritty, depending on what the scene—or shot—demands. Domino resolves one early standoff with a bunch of gangstas by offering to perform a lap-dance—cue the music! A woman bucks up her courage by quoting Billy Ocean—cue the music! And some of the more particularly violent scenes are accompanied by Tom Jones' "Mama Told Me Not to Come" and Bach's "St. Matthew's Passion"—whatever the pyrotechnics seem to demand.

next page... |  1 of 3 | last page