Domino Review

Tony Scott is a true directing enigma. He is certainly talented and yet has never been able to find consistency throughout his career which has resulted in a filmography that reads like a list of action film does (The Hunger, True Romance, Man on Fire) and don'ts (The Fan, The Last Boy Scout, Days of Thunder). Unfortunately, while not a complete loss, Domino falls in to the later category.

The opening is nice enough to point out that the film is "Based on a true story. Sort of." While the "Sort of." points out the fact that the filmmakers are taking extensive creative license, half way through, the film has reached such a point of convoluted excess that the "Based on a true story." carries no weight.

*WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS*

It starts out easily enough with Domino (Keira Knightley) being questioned by an FBI agent (Lucy Liu) regarding an assignment that went wrong. The narrative then launches into a start from the start flashback (of course the whole movie is a flashback) in which Domino, in constant voice over, relates the events of her childhood, first amongst them being the death of her father, Laurence Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate). The screenplay hints at the fact that she was very close to her father but speeds past it so quickly that the death of a goldfish that her father bought her seems to carry more weight than the loss of her father. After the death of her father, her mother's (Jacqueline Bisset) chief occupation becomes finding another rich man to marry and to do so she sends Domino to boarding school which propels her into the world of the rich that she has no desire to be a part of. Domino continues on this "90210", sorority, modeling path at the insistence of her mother but rebels any chance she gets, which is manifested in her practicing the use of weapons such as knives and throwing stars and also punching people in the nose (which seems to be her favorite thing to do). This culminates in her being expelled from college with a bad case of teen angst that she can't seem to shake.

Aimless, with a desire to appease her badgirl tendencies, Domino chances across an add for a bounty hunter seminar and decides that this is right up her alley. At the seminar, which turns out to be a scam, she meets Ed (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Martinez) when she accosts them in an alley while they are fleeing with the $100 entry fee they charged everyone for the seminar. She convinces them that she can apparently give Michelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a run for his money with nunchucks and they reluctantly decide to let her tag along. She begins to go on jobs that Ed and Choco do for a bail bondsman (Delroy Lindo) and they somehow catch the attention of a TV producer (Christopher Walken) who wants to make a reality show out of there exploits.

With the TV crew and the shows hosts (Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green of '90210' fame)following along, our bounty hunters get caught up in a scheme involving the theft of $10 million dollars from the owner (Dabney Coleman) of the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. This is where the plot just gets unnecessarily convoluted and while I might be remiss in not getting into more detail with it, I'm just feeling too lazy to attempt to decipher it into some coherent explanation. Besides, relaying any more detail is fruitless because the plot points are largely arbitrary and function as nothing more than filler for the thin script. I will say that it culminates in a shootout at the Stratosphere that dimly echoes the climax of Scott's far superior film, True Romance.

Woo, ok, so all of that 'plot' stuff is out of the way.

The film is full of promise and certainly has some entertaining moments, but ultimately turns out a mess due in large part to Scott's direction. He has a very interesting style that is one step beyond that of the flavor-of-the-week music video director that is usually employed for action films, but it just does not function here. While in Man on Fire, Scott's growing fondness for franetic editing, repetition of lines, and subtitles functions wonderfully in relation to the narrative and characters, in Domino, it's painfully dominate and severely hampers the film. He just couldn't seem to find any restraint.

One of the more unfortunate parts of the film is that Knightly actually is very good, but she really has nowhere to go with the material. As a result, Domino is a character full of bravado but nothing else. There are some forced attempts at character depth such as a moment where Domino gets to play Robin Hood and the hardly developed, somewhat violent attraction Choco has for her which could have been great material to get into for both characters. The two actors that really do shine throughout are Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken. Rourke, who's career has recently received a boost from Scott and Robert Rodriguez (most notably as Marv in Sin City), is excellent as the weathered lead bounty hunter. And Christopher Walken, well, he's Christopher Walken. Walken is one of the few actors I can think of who can deliver the line "Sorry, I'm having font issues." (no, that's not a typo) and make it work.

Despite all of the bad though, the film does certainly have some entertainment value and the aforementioned performances make it worth seeing. It's definitely to be reserved for the dollar theater or a rental though.

* 1/2 stars

Ok, thus ends my first attempt at a film review. Hopefully it wasn't too painful for you to get through (if you did get through it)!

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