Domino 2005 *
Domino Harvey (Keira Knightly), daughter of actor Laurence Harvey (Romeo and Juliet [50s version], The Alamo, The Manchurian Candidate), is bored with her 90210 life and takes a job for a bail bondsman (Delroy Lindo) as a bounty hunter. She and her two fellow hunters (Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez) begin to become known for their exploits, until finally a reality TV producer (Christopher Walken) decides to make a reality show about them. Unfortunately, the bondsman is manipulating them into his own plot to rip off a nice chunk of change.
According to the credits, this is based on a true story. Sort of.
Anyway, however, much of this story is actually true, it's a pretty interesting one. The script is okay, not great, but not bad, with some character development and neat ideas. A few moments are even kind of compelling.
Unfortunately, director Tony Scott manages to single-handedly destroy the film. The style he used is absolutely awful. It involves nonstop fast cuts of largely blurry, hand-held shots that don't make very much sense. It also involves doing things like cutting to black-and-white or 16mm or 8mm randomly for no apparent reason, speeding things up, slowing down, repeating a frame, repeating a line over and over again, subtitling a few words of the line onto the screen like the audience is a bunch of morons, and moving the camera forward, backward, sideways, diagonally, and sometimes even all four at once. I think. It was kind of hard to tell. It's hard to make out what exactly is going on at times, but more importantly, it's excruciatingly annoying. This throws you completely out of the movie and, consequently, makes it very, very boring. It isn't quite painful on the eyes, but that's about the best I can say for it. Never in the film are you involved or entertained, and very often you want to just rip your hair out of your head to distract you from the extraordinary ineptness. It's like Oliver Stone and Michael Bay working together on one of their bad days, both of them very high on meth or something. Now, doing weird things like those mentioned above with some restraint can be very effective if it's used for a reason. Unfortunately, the only reason Scott seems to have is to say, "Weeeee! Look at me! I have forty million dollars and a movie camera! Look at meeeee!" And so the movie absolutely falls to pieces and just kind of lies there, motionless, occasionally jerking either to try to come back to life or maybe just having some nerves jump randomly like corpses sometimes do.
However, a few good things do emerge somewhat from the rubble.
Knightly is absolutely brilliant. She completely captures the violent, half sane, half wildly crazy person she's portraying. She also gets the emotional damage across in a subtle, believable way without getting melodramatic. This is some seriously good acting. She makes a great bounty hunter. Maybe I should hire her to take down Tony Scott
Mickey Rourke is awesome. This isn't quite the absolutely knockout he had as Marv in Sin City a few months ago, but he's still about as tough and cool in a terrifyingly evil way as they get.
And Christopher Walken does the Christopher Walken better than he has in quite a while. He isn't on screen for very long, but man, when he's there, it's just great to watch him.
Unfortunately, those three can't quite pull the film up out of the bottom of the garbage heap. They do manage to save it from a ZERO STARS rating, but Scott just screws this up so badly they can't save it any more than that. It's frustrated because he isn't a bad director he did a good job with Top Gun, Crimson Tide, and Enemy of the State, among others. So what exactly was he thinking?
In the end, there really isn't much reason for anyone to see this film. If you're in it for the action, it's hard to tell what's happening and when you can figure it out, it turns out it's not that well choreographed anyway. If you're in it for the strong sexual content, you probably wouldn't make out anything worthwhile. If you're in it for the story, you're screwed. If you can just catch a couple of nice sections with Knightly, Rourke, and Walken, and then shut it off, you'll get a little out of it. Otherwise, shun this film and hope Scott gets his act together the next time he decides to make a movie. And that he doesn't manage waste three great performances on a piece of total junk.
Domino Harvey (Keira Knightly), daughter of actor Laurence Harvey (Romeo and Juliet [50s version], The Alamo, The Manchurian Candidate), is bored with her 90210 life and takes a job for a bail bondsman (Delroy Lindo) as a bounty hunter. She and her two fellow hunters (Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez) begin to become known for their exploits, until finally a reality TV producer (Christopher Walken) decides to make a reality show about them. Unfortunately, the bondsman is manipulating them into his own plot to rip off a nice chunk of change.
According to the credits, this is based on a true story. Sort of.
Anyway, however, much of this story is actually true, it's a pretty interesting one. The script is okay, not great, but not bad, with some character development and neat ideas. A few moments are even kind of compelling.
Unfortunately, director Tony Scott manages to single-handedly destroy the film. The style he used is absolutely awful. It involves nonstop fast cuts of largely blurry, hand-held shots that don't make very much sense. It also involves doing things like cutting to black-and-white or 16mm or 8mm randomly for no apparent reason, speeding things up, slowing down, repeating a frame, repeating a line over and over again, subtitling a few words of the line onto the screen like the audience is a bunch of morons, and moving the camera forward, backward, sideways, diagonally, and sometimes even all four at once. I think. It was kind of hard to tell. It's hard to make out what exactly is going on at times, but more importantly, it's excruciatingly annoying. This throws you completely out of the movie and, consequently, makes it very, very boring. It isn't quite painful on the eyes, but that's about the best I can say for it. Never in the film are you involved or entertained, and very often you want to just rip your hair out of your head to distract you from the extraordinary ineptness. It's like Oliver Stone and Michael Bay working together on one of their bad days, both of them very high on meth or something. Now, doing weird things like those mentioned above with some restraint can be very effective if it's used for a reason. Unfortunately, the only reason Scott seems to have is to say, "Weeeee! Look at me! I have forty million dollars and a movie camera! Look at meeeee!" And so the movie absolutely falls to pieces and just kind of lies there, motionless, occasionally jerking either to try to come back to life or maybe just having some nerves jump randomly like corpses sometimes do.
However, a few good things do emerge somewhat from the rubble.
Knightly is absolutely brilliant. She completely captures the violent, half sane, half wildly crazy person she's portraying. She also gets the emotional damage across in a subtle, believable way without getting melodramatic. This is some seriously good acting. She makes a great bounty hunter. Maybe I should hire her to take down Tony Scott
Mickey Rourke is awesome. This isn't quite the absolutely knockout he had as Marv in Sin City a few months ago, but he's still about as tough and cool in a terrifyingly evil way as they get.
And Christopher Walken does the Christopher Walken better than he has in quite a while. He isn't on screen for very long, but man, when he's there, it's just great to watch him.
Unfortunately, those three can't quite pull the film up out of the bottom of the garbage heap. They do manage to save it from a ZERO STARS rating, but Scott just screws this up so badly they can't save it any more than that. It's frustrated because he isn't a bad director he did a good job with Top Gun, Crimson Tide, and Enemy of the State, among others. So what exactly was he thinking?
In the end, there really isn't much reason for anyone to see this film. If you're in it for the action, it's hard to tell what's happening and when you can figure it out, it turns out it's not that well choreographed anyway. If you're in it for the strong sexual content, you probably wouldn't make out anything worthwhile. If you're in it for the story, you're screwed. If you can just catch a couple of nice sections with Knightly, Rourke, and Walken, and then shut it off, you'll get a little out of it. Otherwise, shun this film and hope Scott gets his act together the next time he decides to make a movie. And that he doesn't manage waste three great performances on a piece of total junk.