DOMINO
US, 2005, 128 minutes, Colour.
Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo, Mo’ Nique, Mina Suvari, Jacqueline Bisset, Dabney Coleman, Brian Austin Green, Lucy Liu, Christopher Walken, Tom Waites, Jerry Springer.
Directed by Tony Scott.
This is a very flashy film with more than a touch of what used to be called ‘psychedelic style’. It was filmed on 35mm film with High Digital cameras. This has enabled director, Tony Scott, to draw on his long history of making commercials to employ an enormous range of colour effects, sweeps, palettes that characterise MTV-influenced movie-making. That means it will be visually exhilarating or distracting and exhausting depending on taste.
The screenplay is flashy as well. It’s something of a moving mosaic, as complicated and sometimes as unfathomable as a jigsaw puzzle. It was written by Richard Kelly who achieved some notoriety with Donnie Darko which he both wrote and directed. That was a tantalising drama combining reality, fantasy, off-kilter imagination. Domino is definitely off-kilter.
Tony Scott is entitled to bring the story of Domino Harvey to the screen. He had known her since she was twenty and had been in discussions with her about a film on her life and her adventures. He sees himself as being a father-figure to her for a decade or more. He had also known her associates and been fascinated by them.
At the beginning and end of the film, Domino Harvey announces that she is a bounty hunter. With her comfortable and socialite family background, her educated accent and her being the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey (seen in this film in clips from The Manchurian Candidate), she is an unlikely bet for taking up the career of a bounty hunter. However, she was a rebel, ready to take risks, exhilarated by adrenalin pumping as she pursued and caught criminal, attracted to what might be called the ‘low life’. In 2005, Domino Harvey took her own life.
The film-makers announce that this film is based on a true story and just as we are taking that in after seeing a swift paced, brutal attack on would-be thieves, they add, tongue-in-cheekily, ‘sort of’. The film goes backwards and forwards with Domino’s life, gets us lost in who are the villains and who are not (even resurrecting characters we have seen being executed), so that by the gun-battle climax at the top of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas, it is difficult to tell who is gunning whom down!
This is a ‘post-modern’ blend of the comic, the intensely individual, the brutal (reminding us that Tony Scott directed the Tarantino script, True Romance). Keira Knightly, still on a startlingly rapid rise to stardom, is Domino, Mickey Rourke does a variation on his usual as her boss. Venezuelan Edgar Ramirez is Choco, the third member of the team. Domino is a whirl of a film.
1.Based on a true story? Laurence Harvey’s daughter? Her work as a bounty hunter? Robbery and drugs? The postscript of her death?
2.The contrast between Domino’s British upbringing? The style of English education, home life? The contrast with the world of Los Angeles, criminals, bounty hunters? The world of television, reality shows?
3.The visual style of the film, hand-held camera, blurred colour? The editing and pace? The immediacy? The artificiality – corresponding to the blur of Domino’s life and work? The musical score and the wide range of contemporary songs? Classics?
4.The world of reality television, Christopher Walken as the producer, his interest in bounty hunters? Cameramen, directors, cast? The immediacy of reality television? Its sensationalism? Domino fitting into this world? Jerry Springer?
5.The English background? Domino’s mother? The fact that Laurence Harvey was her father? The influence of her father’s fame? The proper English education? Her mother’s English style?
6.Domino breaking out of England, going to Los Angeles? The framework of the film? The interview by the FBI? The ten million dollar robbery from Las Vegas? Her remembering her story?
7.Her modelling career, the other models? The motivation for becoming a bounty hunter? Her friendship with Ed Mosebey, with Choco? Their world? Tough?
8.The introduction of Claremont Williams, his work as a bail bondsman? His family problems, his daughter, the granddaughter and medical bills? His contacts with criminals? With the mobsters?
9.Domino and her personality, attracting the television? The crew following her round, the TV pilot?
10.The decision by Claremont to organise the robbery? Las Vegas? Drake Bishop, his casino, management? His involvement with the Mob?
11.The robbery itself? The detail? Lateesha and her involvement? The plan about the money? The cash, the fees? The attorney, his giving the information to Cigliutti? Claremont and his work for Cigliutti, laundering his money?
12.Cigliutti, his action, suspicions of Claremont?
13.Lateesha, her being taken by the FBI, the interrogation, her using it to implicate Cigliutti, his two sons, other associates? Pinning the robbery
on them?
14.Domino, Ed and Chico, their taking Cigliutti’s sons, Claremont’s instructions? Their giving them to Bishop, his action with the sons?
15.The mobster, the reaction to Bishop, revenge, presumption about his sons’ death?
16.The double dealings, Domino, Ed and Chico and the money, in the skyscraper, the handing over of the money?
17.The build-up the dramatic, highly dramatic shootout, in the skyscraper, the mobsters, Bishop and Ed and their deaths?
18.Domino going free? The irony of her dealing with drugs? Her death as the film was being made?
19.An interesting life – or an ultimately futile life?
