Jackass Critics

Domino

So, yeah, what happens when you try to be too damned clever with your direction of a film? You freakin’ ruin the damned movie. Which isn’t to say this was going to win an Oscar anyway, but man alive, if there was a movie where the director interfered way too much it’s this one, baby.

Focusing on the life of Domino Harvey (Keira Knightly), a woman who was born into wealth but gave up that and a modeling career to pursue the life of bounty hunting. It’s based on a true story but the facts are fudged left and right. Domino is a beautiful young girl with a very bad attitude. Unhappy with being just a pretty girl she wants to do something dangerous, something where she can get out her pent-up aggression. Seeing an ad for a class for bounty hunting, she decides this might be what she’s looking for. The class is a sham though, and before the real workshops begin the men putting on the class bail, taking everyone’s money with them. Catching on to this scheme, Domino manages to stop the men before they are able to leave, demanding they take her on as an apprentice. Liking her spirit, and her looks, they do it, though reluctantly. Domino gets the excitement and adventure she had craved right from the start as the three of them, she, her boss, and her co-worker, all nearly get killed when the person they’re after tricks them into a trap where they are vastly outnumbered and outgunned. And it’s here where we see what it is Domino brings to the team, as she uses her sexuality as a weapon and manages to get the three of them out of that jam and even gets their man all with a simple lap dance. Naturally her co-workers immediately see the value in her joining the team. Things are better from there, the three of them tracking and capturing everyone that they’re set upon and everything is looking up. Things are so good in fact that a television producer decides he wants to create a show based not around the group, but around Domino, and about her adventures. And she loves this idea, though it is insisted that her co-workers are involved as well. The situation becomes complicated though when Domino and her gang become involved in a kidnapping and money-laundering scheme things quickly get above their heads and much more dangerous than they had ever imagined.

Now, I take umbrage with the notion of taking someone’s life and basically fabricating things to make it more interesting for a film. I understand that it’s hard to know everything that someone did but, hell, they had Domino Harvey around, why not have her write her story? And I love Richard Kelly who wrote and directed Donnie Darko, and the script here is ok, but the story isn’t very good. It veers this way and that and, again, it appears that very little of it is based on face. In which case, why not MAKE UP someone for this film? How many of us even know who Domino was? Not many. But really, the big problem I have here is the direction, which borders on awful. This is a case of a director being far too clever, Mr. Scott, and using too many tricks to tell the tale. I haven’t seen this many jump cuts since I sat down to watch a rap video. And while they can be used to great effect, sometimes, in this case it only distracts the viewer and takes you out of the story. All these tricks worked, barely, for Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers but not here. The story is thin, the direction is awful, and the plot is a mess. Yes, Keira is sexy, and yes, some of the characters are interesting, but overall? LAME.

The hell of it is that this isn’t a bad film. It has stars, production values, and is shot with a lot of energy. But it just doesn’t jell. It doesn’t work. It feels like someone wanted to make an art action film and by god they did it. Sadly. At best I can say it’s ok. But Tony Scott’s impression of an Oliver Stone film just didn’t work for me. A lot of people like the frenetic action and the intense energy, so hey, if you do, then you might try the movie. It might do it for you. For me, it was a mess, and just didn’t do much for me at all.

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