Domino Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)October 12th, 2005
DOMINO
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): 1/2
DOMINO is a completely incoherent mess, told exclusively in two-second segments. Rock videos are models of lucid and unhurried storytelling compared to DOMINO, which features 30 cuts a minute with the camera zooming around at random, as if some kindergartner had been hired to do the cinematography. All of the images have been oversaturated in post-processing, giving the picture an artistic but very ugly appearance.
As directed by Tony Scott, the movie makes about as much sense as trying to hear a story told by a cokehead who is so high that he is about to explode. We are told in the opening that the movie is based on a true story, which is then amended to "Sort of." It is based on the bounty hunter career of Domino Harvey, the daughter of Laurence Harvey, whom we see in a television clip of him in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. I really wish that filmmakers of such trash as DOMINO wouldn't tease and taunt us by showing excerpts from really good movies. It sure makes you want to bolt.
Keira Knightley, as Domino, explains that she has never killed anyone but that she likes the bounty hunter life, in which she is usually bloodied and beaten up, because, "I can live the nasty and not do time for it." Mickey Rourke, just doing his standard schtick, plays Domino's boss.
The movie makes us suffer through one mindless scene after another, while Domino philosophizes about life in voice-over. Typical of her homilies is a trite one about the importance of knowing when to cash out. The film's choppy little episodes are subtitled with names like "I am bored" -- boy, weren't we all -- so that those audience members with IQs under 50 can still follow the action.
Domino has a whole bag of silly tricks she uses in order to accomplish her mission. The most ridiculous of them comes in a big standoff. With a dozen guys and one gal with their guns drawn and ready to fire at each other, she offers a free lap dance to the lead bad guy if everyone will put down their guns. She does as promised, but the scene, which isn't the least bit erotic, is just as much of an unsatisfying tease as is the rest of the movie.
The only good part of the picture comes in the sassy little ways that Knightley sometimes can use her English accent to twist simple phrases such as, "I wanted to have a little fun," into something deliciously wicked.
The movie is easily summed up by Kimmie (Mena Suvari), the personal assistant to Mark Heiss (Christopher Walken), a reality TV show producer interested in doing a series about Domino and her team. "Speak in short sentences," Kimmie lectures Domino about how to converse with her boss. "He has the attention span of a ferret."
DOMINO runs way too long at 2:00. It is rated R for "strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity and drug use" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 14, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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