Movie Review: Domino

I went to see Tony Scott's latest movie two nights ago but didn't have time to post a review yesterday.

Domino is the "sort of" true story of Domino Harvey, a movie star's daughter and former Ford model who, jaded with life, answers an ad in the paper looking for bounty hunters and embarks on a new career on the edge of the law.

Domino is certainly a fascinating character, Keira Knightly seems unlikely in this role but is, in fact, very good, and her story would seem to be a very interesting one.

However, this movie isn't really her story at all...in fact....this movie isn;t really anything. It looks fantastic, is very artfully shot, but...Scott seems so concerned with getting the film's look right that he completely loses focus when it comes to plot and characters. As such, this is a lot like sitting through a two hour music video, and the effect is little more than nauseating. You could alsom like the experience of watching this as being like sitting in front of a strobe light for two hours, and I'm surprised there's no warning for epileptics before the film starts.

I really feel for Keira Knightly here, she's put her heart and soul into this role and she really is very good...but the film is shot and edited in such a way that you just find it completely impossible to connect with her. You really don't care whether her or her friends live or die, and in a film like this, that's disasterous.

Rather than the fascinating bio-pic this could have been, we're subjected to a complex plot involving an inside job to steal ten million dollars from a Las Vegas hotellier and then pay it back to him to collect a three hundre dthousand dollar finders fee. This plot is hatched by Domino's gang's boss, and he seriosuly lands them in it by having them deliver a group of young men they've framed for the robbery to the mob to be executed. However, two of the young men are the sons of a mafia boss. So...Domino and her gang end up caught between the Las Vegas millionaire and the mafia. Messy business indeed....but you really don't care. Why? Because you never get to know any of the characters. Domino's life story is told in two or three extremely short flashbacks, so you never really learn who she is or what motivates her. We're really never given any other reason for her becoming a bounty hunter other tahn that she's bored and she wants to have some fun. It's all just too shallow. As for her two companions, they are almost totally blank slates who do little more than react to the situations they are in.

This is a total train wreck of a movie and given the subject matter and Tony Scott's excellent record as a director I really am at a loss as to explain why. This could have been so much better.

Rating: 5/10