TODAY'S MOVIE REVIEW: 'Domino'


Slightly longer version of a review in today's Oregonian:




"Domino" opens with a title card that gives its filmmakers a peculiar brand of carte blanche: "This is based on a true story … sort of."

Take out the "true," and you're actually a little closer to describing "Domino"'s biggest problem.

Director Tony Scott's over-edited, over-long Big Lie of a biopic tells a story … sort of -- that is, until you try to pluck the actual fundamentals of storytelling (character, dialogue, plot, logic) out of Scott's bottomless bag of editing tricks, macho posturing, sound-bite dialogue and fever-dream histrionics.

At which point you realize there's nothing there. "Domino" is a total fraud.

Of course, if you were to press Mr. Scott on the matter, he'd probably tell you this is intentional. The movie (from a screenplay by "Donnie Darko"'s Richard Kelly) is essentially a big, convoluted lie spewing from the mouth of bounty hunter Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley) as she's interrogated by an FBI agent (Lucy Liu) in a room lit that shade of over-saturated green that got old about halfway through the first "Matrix" sequel.

Ms. Harvey is coming off a mescaline trip as she tries to talk her way out of a very nasty mess -- the bloody aftermath of a botched saga of double-crosses, involving two veteran bounty hunters (Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez), a corrupt bailbondsman (Delroy Lindo), a reality-TV producer (Christopher Walken), a casino owner (Dabney Coleman) armed robbers dressed as the First Ladies and, what the hell, the mafia, one-armed trailer trash, Tom Waits, Jerry Springer and "celebrity hostages" from the cast of "Beverly Hills 90210."

Domino Harvey was a real-life bounty hunter -- a former model and the daughter of "Manchurian Candidate" actor Laurence Harvey. She died of a drug overdose last June. And it's obvious that Scott and Kelly are inserting her into this tall tale in name only -- because a story this ridiculously false can only be intended as some sort of deeply textured exploration of the nature of "truth," or something.

But unfortunately, all this film has is "texture."

Scott has edited "Domino" like an endless opening-credits sequence; a 10-second flashback of Domino flushing her goldfish down the toilet has about eight cuts, a couple of herky-jerky camera swipes and double exposures and an overexposed-film flare-up, all set to a hip-hop soundtrack. (I am -- I kid you not -- only slightly exaggerating here. At one point the characters are tripping on mescaline, and there is almost no change in the film's look and editing. It's that relentless.)

In small doses, this looks kind of neat; over two hours, it's excruciating. And, even worse, it buries anything resembling a conversation, a performance, logic, or normal human psychology. We never get to know the real Domino Harvey in this film -- but even worse, we never get to know the fictional one. Sort of.

'Domino' theory (The Oregonian, Oct. 14, 2005)


Posted: Fri - October 14, 2005 at 10:54 AM        

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