She’s gorgeous, sexy, British, sexy and gorgeous (did I say something twice?) – her name is Keira Knightley. Knightley is still not a household name despite being in the mega-blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean and such hit films as Bend it Like Beckham and Love Actually, but things are about to change as she will be having a coming out party with Pride and Prejudice later this year and Tony Scott’s music video on acid – Domino.
In Domino Keira stars as the late Domino Harvey, daughter of actor Laurence Harvey and one time bounty hunter. The skinny Brit taps into the rebellious Harvey and begins wielding nun chucks at the pool, punching sorority girls in the nose and tossing knives through windshields – yeah, this one is a bit on edge. Joining Keira in the madness are Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez as they scour the States in search of felonious bail jumpers, all while experimenting in drugs and reality TV, which brings us to Christopher Walken, Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green. Yup, the “90210” boys are here.
Walken plays television producer Mark Heiss who wants to follow the bounty hunting team around as a next generation “COPS” with Green and Ziering playing themselves as the reluctant hosts of said show. This should serve as an excellent example to the nature of this film, while serious on the surface it is filled with a dark comedy edge that is going to have audiences leaning one way or another, and even those that find it satisfying are sure to find flaws.
Tony Scott has a style all of his own, a style that served him well on such spy thrillers as Enemy of the State and Spy Game, but seemed to serve as distracting with last year’s revenge tale Man on Fire. Well, he digs back into the flash bang theory with Domino but this time he digs even deeper. This movie is saturated to the fullest extent creating a world of green, orange and yellow seemingly exactly where it doesn’t belong, but that is what makes it so unique. Whereas this psychotic acid trip didn’t help Man on Fire it fills Domino perfectly and really hints to the audience how serious they should, or should not, take this film. After all, how many movies can you actually laugh at a man getting his arm blown off? Not many I would wager.
This is not to say Domino is perfect if looked at correctly, there is no way to look at this film one way or another. It depends on your mood, your attitude and what you are looking for. Don’t take this movie seriously for a second or you will hate it, it is a rollercoaster ride of insanity and should be looked at as such. It is really the only way you can enjoy it.
There are a couple of scenes that seem out of nowhere, particularly towards the end that will have a lot of you scratching your head. Most notably wait ’til Tom Waits appears and then be ready for an extremely gratuitous sex scene, which if you look deep makes sense, but for the most part is coming so far out of left field it’s hard to find it’s usefulness besides an opportunity to peek at Keira’s goodies.
Overall Domino is what it is, crazy, psycho fun. It isn’t a movie you can enjoy if you are in the right frame of mind, but if you aren’t prepared you may actually hate this movie.
