Domino

Many could be blamed for the complete failure of Domino, the amateurish, unpleasant and thoroughly pointless 2005 film about the exploits of a real-life model turned bounty hunter. Donnie Darko writer/director Richard Kelly has produced a script that represents, I believe, the ultimate in nihilism. This is a 2 hour film about absolutely nothing, in which no one cares about anyone or anything, except looking tough.

Star Keira Knightly proves once again that, though classically beautiful, she has less on-screen appeal than a week-old, sun-dried mayonnaise sandwich.

Director Tony Scott, he of Top Gun and Crimson Tide fame, stumbles around this material like a nervous, clueless, possibly drunk first-timer. Actually, I take that back. Domino doesn't simply feel like the work of a novice director...It feels like the work of someone who had never seen a film before, so he had no clue of where to point the camera, or even that particular appratus' function.

I have no idea if the life of Domino Harvey, bounty hunter, would make a good movie. Based on the rough outline - the beautiful daughter of a long-dead Hollywood actor (Lawrence Harvey of Manchurian Candidate fame) finds a lucrative career rounding up bail-jumpers for a crooked bondsman - it sounds kind of outrageous and promising. Even though the real Domino Harvey died of a drug overdose just prior to the film's release, which kind of puts a damper on things.

But this version of the events does no justice to this real woman or her, apparently, interesting life story. This movie is a complete mess, one of the sloppiest, most senselessly loud, chaotic and obnoxious films I have seen in a long time. Tony Scott should probably retire, rather than immediately begin work on his next film in a water-logged New Orleans (Deja Vu, which will be out later this year).



Check the scowl. That's Keira's one mode for this entire film. At the beginning of the movie, she's explaining her life to an FBI agent (Lucy Liu), and it's this voice-over that will plunge us into the world of Los Angeles criminality. Actually, I don't know why the voice-over was needed at all. The movie's really confusing, but Domino never tells us in her narration what's going on, anyway. She mostly gives us information we've already heard, again, or introduces us to characters who won't matter because they zip through the film briefly as it hurtles forward at warp speed.

After her father died young, followed by her beloved goldfish (seriously...), young Domino decides that she doesn't care about any living thing, and devotes her life to violence. As this transformation forms the entire crux of the movie - a young person of privilege embracing a life of violent debauchery - you'd think Scott would spend a little time on it. At the very least, you'd think he would acknowledge that drug abuse might have played some small role in Domino's transformation from model to bounty hunter. But, no...Instead, we get shots of Keira looking sullen in the foreground, smoking cigarettes, while sorority sisters dance around behind her. Oooh, she's angsty. You are dark, Domino!

So, of course, because of her hatred of Hollywood and show business and preening femininity, Domino becomes...a model. But she's a bored model! We know she is bored because, next to her as she walks down the catwalk, appear the words "I am bored."

Yeah, Tony, we just heard her say that in the voice-over. Not to mention that you have Keira making a "bored model" face into the camera. Why actually inform us of the character's inner thoughts using text on the screen. Was is this, Pop Up Fucking Video? You're making feature films, let's get a little professionalism!

Also, you might be wondering why you'd tell these kinds of personal details of your life to an FBI interrogator who only wants to know about the crimes you've just committed? Or how, exactly, we're supposed to care about a beautiful rich young girl with absolutely no sense of humor or personality who turns to a life of violent criminality for kicks? For answers to these questions, as well as requests for your money back, please write to "Tony Scott, c/o Scott Free Productions, Hollywood, CA 90210."

All this covers only the first few minutes of the movie. There is so much plot going on, and Tony whizzes by everything so quickly, that there's really no time to absorb anything. Domino's hot, she's sad, she is a model, she stops being a model, she gets tattooes, she becomes a bounty hunter in the employ of another bounty hunter (Mickey Rourke) and a sleazy bail bondsman (Delroy Lindo). There's no conflict, so there's no drama. Things happen but don't link up to one another at all. It's a series of events that don't even try to congeal into a story until about the hour mark. Then, it becomes more story-like, but continues to make absolutely no logical sense.

Eventually, the film will include a severed arm, members of the cast of "Beverly Hills 90210," Chris Walken as a deranged reality TV producer, $10 million stolen from an armored car, a wacky Afghani driver/terrorist wannabe, a horrifying car crash followed by hot desert sex, and Tom Waits as a religious guru/potentially mescaline-induced hallucination. None of it will be nearly as amusing or interesting as that all sounds.

To compensate for his utter lack of narrative or, let's face it, intelligence, Scott refuses to hold the camera still for one goddamn minute and actually show us what's happening. Instead, every image in the film is shot from an angle, overexposed, artificially blurred, filtered through colored lenses and filters and then digitally distorted. It's not just really ugly, but needlessly confusing. It makes even simple scenes, with two or three characters discussing vital plot information, extremely difficult to follow. Some sequences where the humor might have actually had a shot at working (like some of the strange meta-comedy with Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green, for example) is ruined by Scott's overbearing, distracting technique.

I'm not one of these people that thinks movies are warping children's minds or causing violent behavior, and I'm pretty much never in favor of censorship of any kind. So I'm not telling you that Domino is actually a social evil, or something we as a society should band together and keep locked away from sight. But I do think it's pretty ugly, reprehensible stuff, a movie that doesn't just glorify in violence but seems to find senseless bloodshed rather deliciously amusing.

In many scenes, acts of violence themselves are the joke. Not once, but twice do men come up and hit on Domino, only for her to wait a moment and then punch them. You think, the second time, she's going to react to this leacherous chauvanism in some different way...because why would a movie include the same exact scene twice? But it's just that kind of movie.

Domino herself, as she narrates the movie to Lucy Liu, does so with a broken nose and blood spilling down her face. We keep expecting, as the story bounces around through time, to see her actually break the nose and bloody herself. It never happens. Keira doesn't have that make-up on because it links up somehow to the narrative...Tony must just think that's a sexy look, a girl wearing too much make-up who looks like she's had the shit kicked out of her. He and Luc Besson would probably get along.