On the faint line between watchable and awful...

Director Tony Scott is no stranger to the realm of action cinema. He's also no stranger to the plague of "style over substance". Scott frequently manages to spoil a good screenplay with his incomprehensible visual style. Man of Fire is a classic example. When it comes to action movies it's a shame that Tony Scott can't retain the solid visual elegance of his prior movies, such as Top Gun or The Last Boy Scout. Occasionally his contemporary visual style is quite impressive and works amazingly, but it's hopelessly overused and despondently perplexing. 2005's Domino marks yet another Tony Scott foray into action cinema. It's a jumbled, contrived and confusing biopic of bounty hunter Domino Harvey. It's a competently-made film that's unfortunately marred by a muddled script and the nauseating visual techniques that resemble the latest punk music video.

Domino was written by Richard Kelly of the Donnie Darko fame. Personally, I loved Donnie Darko and expected more great things from Kelly. Unfortunately his involvement with the amazing 2001 cult phenomenon makes Domino even more disappointing. The film is a disorderly fusion of action, comedy and irritating MTV cinematography that tells the story of real-life bounty hunter Domino Harvey (Knightley). However the film doesn't faithfully retell Domino's life at all. As a matter of fact, probably 60-70% of the film is fictitious (according to a number of sources). Domino is more of a fictional homage to its title character. This is reinforced by the opening disclaimer that states "Based on a true story...sort of."

Domino Harvey is the daughter of famous actor Laurence Harvey (best known for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate opposite Frank Sinatra) and Vogue model Paulene Stone (mysteriously renamed Sophie Wynn for the film, and played by Bisset). She's born into a life of wealth and privilege - a "90210" life as Domino describes it - which she abhors. After the death of her father, Domino's mother feels that boarding school could tame her wild child. Soon after being expelled (for punching a fellow sorority girl), Domino feels she's found her calling when she spots an advert for a bounty hunter seminar. From there she teams up with two professional bounty hunters (Rourke and Ramirez).

Domino is a cinematic pastiche full of kinetic energy that never lets up for a second. One of the only positives that can be said regarding the film is the competency behind the camera and the impressive visual style. I also had a great time watching the film. Despite being confusing and sometimes intolerably chaotic, it's a wickedly enjoyable guilty pleasure that's very much alive. Dialogue is somewhat witty, characters are intriguing, and the soundtrack is terrific.

However, instead of being a deep and emotionally satisfying biopic, the film offers little insight into the title character. Her motivations are never explored. Why did Domino rebel against her affluent life? We're lead to believe that she wanted more fun and danger into her life, but this is merely explored in a few lines of narration with Keira Knightley's voice filtered to make it sound as if she's reporting on the weather over a bad mobile phone connection. Instead of exploring Domino's incentives, the 2-hour running time is filled with dreary exposition and redundant scene fillers. Some scenes are played more than once for no reason at all other than to extend the running time. Apparently there's also some love occurring between Domino and Choco that's seldom explored. This love is hinted at through one line of narration before resurfacing towards the film's conclusion. From nowhere Domino loves Choco after yelling at him multiple times and never showing any interest in him at all.

Perhaps the worst insult is the deficiency of scenes depicting Domino kicking ass (Domino even famously said "My agenda is to kick ass!"). For at least the first 90 minutes we're subjected to completely unrelated side-trips into useless minutia. Some celluloid is even wasted for a situation on Jerry Springer. Granted, it's very funny, but it serves no purpose. The meaningful scenes are few and far between. This aforementioned Jerry Springer scene was obviously included as the screenwriter was determined to use it, plot be damned.

The story scurries around in time, jumping back and forth to events that never seem to come together coherently. Domino's story is punctuated with an awfully annoying narration and an interrogation being conducted between Domino and an FBI profiler (Lui). The crux of the story appears to be some form of elaborate and unintelligible heist that Domino is involved in. To be honest, a majority of Kelly's script is a hopeless mess of useless exposition that never develops any lucid narrative. The story is jumbled, confusing, convoluted and plainly incoherent. The whole thing is so complex and stupid, and at the end of the day I still have no idea what actually happens 70% of the time.

Keira Knightley plays Domino to absolute perfection. Her mannerisms are wonderful. Unfortunately, her voice-over narration becomes so repetitive and repulsively filtered that it feels like torture for the ears. Most annoying is the use of "My name is Domino Harvey". The endless droning of Keira's voice becomes quite excruciating, which is a real shame.
Mickey Rourke plays the archetypal tough guy with muscles and weapons. He appears to be doing something cool with his role, as does Edgar Ramirez.
Lucy Lui also makes an appearance as the FBI profiler. Unfortunately, Lui doesn't get much to work with. She appears to do nothing more than stare impassively at Domino and make empty threats.

The marketing campaign for Domino was imbued with great potential. Director Tony Scott has a number of fascinating films on his résumé, and screenwriter Richard Kelly will forever be remembered for the brilliant Donnie Darko. However, the film is predominantly damaged due to the work of both men. Kelly's script is obnoxious and horribly incoherent at times, whereas Scott fills the screen with colours that annoying bleed and emulsify. It's an intensely electric film about an enthralling individual, but it sometimes slips into frustratingly vapid monotony due to a story that never quite grips the viewer. It's plain style over substance material. Quite frankly, though, it's still one hell of a ride.
(Apparently Domino is superior to Richard Kelly's Southland Tales; a film that completely tanked at Cannes in 2006, scoring the lowest reviews of any film at the festival. Kelly described the negative reaction as a "very painful experience on a lot of levels".)

5.6/10