admin @ Wed, 2005-10-12 11:43
In telling the story of Domino Harvey, who rejected her posh British upbringing and brief stint in modelling for life as a bounty hunter, Scott has created an audiovisual assault. Be sure to bring earplugs - and maybe a blindfold.
Scott trots out every imaginable music video gimmick - a mix of swish pans and snap zooms, of grainy slow-motion and sped-up footage, of various film stocks and filters. Other annoying tactics include throwing words up on the screen as people say them (which he also favoured in the slightly less obnoxious Man on Fire) and having characters repeat themselves for no apparent reason.
Scott makes Darren Aronofsky and Paul Thomas Anderson look like Merchant and Ivory. He makes you wonder, is he serious? Or is this supposed to be a parody of an overblown action flick?
The director knew Domino well - he describes the daughter of Laurence Harvey, star of the original Manchurian Candidate, as a "surrogate daughter'' of his own and says he consistently warned her to be careful, up until her June death from an accidental overdose at 35. He should have known that her story was intriguing enough without smothering it in technological trickery.
And in Knightley, he should have known that he had an actress who's compelling enough to carry a big action movie with an eclectic ensemble cast. It's not such a different role for the beautiful young star of Bend it Like Beckham and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies - Knightley wielded a mean bow and arrow in King Arthur. She can hold her own with the shotgun-toting big boys with a combination of wit, vulnerability and sex appeal.
What you'll remember most from Domino, though, is the dried blood - crusting beneath her nose and above her upper lip, a facial area to which Scott devotes several extreme close-ups as Domino chain-smokes while being interrogated by an FBI psychologist (Lucy Liu).
In this fictionalized snippet of her life, written by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) and Steve Barancik, Domino and her fellow bounty hunters Ed (Mickey Rourke, perfect for the part) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez) go after the suspects who've stolen millions from the Stratosphere.
They've gotten the assignment from their employer, bail bondsman Claremont Williams III (Delroy Lindo), whose girlfriend, Lateesha (comedian Mo'Nique), works for the California Department of Motor Vehicles and makes fake IDs on the side, the recipients of which may be the same people as our suspects.
This wildly unfocused story attempts to be about a great number of things besides Domino herself, including an indictment of reality TV (which has been done a million times) and an exploration of the seamy side of the entertainment industry (which has been done a million and one times). Then to jumble the proceedings further, Domino grinds to a halt to allow Mo'Nique to do a standup routine about race as a guest on The Jerry Springer Show, and Tom Waits shows up, possibly as a mescaline-induced hallucination, in the desert.
This is cache, read story here