Domino (2005)

In light of the recent death of director Tony Scott, one of the few good things to come out of Teesside, I decided to check out one of his less appreciated works. I'm not going to sugar coat it because he recently died: Domino is pretty terrible and nowhere near as good as the man's other work.

The problems with this film could probably be explained if you imagine what the production meeting must have been like: a litter of ADHD afflicted labrador puppies hopped up on coke flinging ideas at the wall just to see what sticks, in the mid-90s. Everything wrong here is a result of having no attention span and trying to cram way too much in. It tries to shoe-horn so much plot that you see scenes play out, only to be told later on that "Oh wait, it didn't actually happen like that at all but happened like this instead" in the most boring case of using an unreliable narrator I've ever seen. All of this done through scenes that ended up being responsible for more cuts that any My Chemical Romance album.

A completely unnecessary romantic sub-plot (to use that word loosely) appears out of nowhere right when the film should end, before going on for another half hour. It is completely forced and unnecessary, especially during a tale that, I thought, was supposed to showcase a woman who could handle herself just as well as a man in the world of bounty hunting, but you just get her eventually falling back on a supporting male character for help and validation.

Domino Harvey, of the title role, is played by Keira Knightley. Domino is a British ex-model turned bounty hunter in the US. Did I mention she's British? Because, holy shit, she will definitely make sure you know it. I know Knightley is English and apparently born and raised in London, but her accent here is so exaggerated it pretty much comes full circle and sounds like a bad impression of an aristocrat. The only redeeming thing I can say about her performance is ultimately shallow, but she does look pretty damn amazing as a grungy, shorthaired delinquent considering she pretty much exclusively does period costume dramas these days. It’d be nice to see her do something a bit more adrenaline fuelled now that her acting skill is allegedly more mature in her past few films, e.g. Anna Karenina.