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Film review

'Domino' falls

Perhaps Hollywood should put a bounty on the heads of the filmmakers who turned out this drivel.

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published October 13, 2005

Tony Scott's signature directorial style is shooting everything in such tight closeup that the action is nearly incomprehensible. So here's a good way to prepare for Domino:

First, stare at a brick wall from about 2 inches away.

Now, hold up a magnifying glass and focus so deep you see every detail in the brick.

Oh, and one more thing:

Throw your head back and repeatedly smash it into the wall. If you think you'd enjoy that experience, you might just be masochistic enough to love Domino.

But probably not.

Keira Knightley stars as - well, sort of, as - the late real-life bounty hunter Domino Harvey in this two-hour abomination.

Harvey's actual story might have made an interesting film. Daughter of British film star Laurence Harvey, she modeled and ran a London nightclub before becoming a bounty hunter.

But writers Richard Kelly and Steve Barancik ignore almost everything that was true about Harvey and her adventures. Domino focuses on a fictionalized Harvey working with two fictional comrades - Ed (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez) - loosely based on real bounty hunters.

Kelly and Barancik inject the trio into a made-up mishmash involving an armored car heist, a desperately sick child and a reality TV show.

Oh, and onetime Beverly Hills, 90210 beefcakes Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering have extended roles as themselves. Seriously.

Kelly, who wrote and directed the deservedly beloved cult film Donnie Darko, actually has described the Domino screenplay as a "pseudo-biopic-action-satire."

Best guess is he considers it his take on Adaptation and somehow intended to imbue some postmodern irony into a narrative that swipes its climax straight from Scott's own True Romance. But next to Oliver Stone, no director is less capable of irony than Tony Scott.

It's not that the director didn't have time to iron it out; he cultivated the project for more than 10 years. Domino is a film many thought would never get made.

Too bad they weren't right.

Grade: F

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo, Lucy Liu, Mo'Nique, Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari

Screenplay: Richard Kelly, Steve Barancik

Rating: R; strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity, drug use

Running time: 120 min.

[Last modified October 12, 2005, 10:18:06]