Posted: 10/16/2005

Domino

(2005)

by Hank Yuloff

From the very beginning, you know Domino is going to be a feast for the eyes. There is a thumping soundtrack, dazzling opening credits, echoing reverb dialog, and a grainy hand held style with film that is processed with heavy emphasis on green, yellow and orange overlays. It is a work of art as well as a very good action flick.

It is the almost (sort of, as we are told) true story of Domino Harvey. The daughter of Laurence Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate, Dial M for Murder) who trashed her career as a fashion model and becomes a bounty hunter, a job, she says, she has prepared for since she was twelve. The movie follows her progression from being a “tough chick” in school to focusing that talent and anger into a career that lets her do all sorts of nasty things while still being on the right side of the law.

The main story line has her and her boss Ed Mosbey (Mickey Rourke from Man on Fire, Nine and 1/2 weeks) and associate, Choco (Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez) hunting down $10 million stolen from the owner of a Las Vegas casino. As with many movies, it isn’t so much the story of the movie that needs to be great when the artistry of the making of it is incredible.

If Domino were directed by anyone other than Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Crimson Tide) it would not be the same film. Maybe he learned this frenetic style from Jerry Bruckheimer (Armegeddon, Black Hawk Down), who produced Top Gun and Enemy of State for Scott because this movie is as quick and flashy as Bruckheimer’s lightning bolt logo.

Keira Knightly, who I fell in love with in Bend it Like Beckham and again in Love, Actually, plays a character completely different from both when she dons the persona of Domino. She IS the bad ass chick that would sooner kick the ass of a celebrity who tries to pick up on her (Brian Austin Green playing himself along with fellow 90210 star Ian Ziering) than just tell him to Piss Off. She’s the bad girl you would never take home to mother but who you want all your friends to know you are dating…. ‘Cause if you ever get mugged, she will cover your ass.

I was completely enthralled by the flick. There are a couple of twists in the plot that take some catching up to, and there are some plausibility gaps, but the movie is moving so fast that you don’t have much time to ponder them, let alone think them through enough to care.

The sound track is great. And kudos to the sound editors. It isn’t giving anything away to let you in on one thing to listen for. In one scene, Choco, with seemingly superhuman strength, is about to throw a TV onto a passing car. Listen for the $6 Million Man “strength” sound cut deep in the background when he throws it. Just one of the many layers of Domino that makes it a big bowl of eye candy.

The sad thing to learn about Harvey is that earlier this year she was found unresponsive in a bathtub in her Los Angeles home, June 27, 2005, dying that day in a hospital of an accidental overdose of the painkiller, Fentanyl, at age 35. We are not given any hint of her future at the end of the movie and it was sad to see this ending to her life.

Hank Yuloff is our senior film critic in Los Angeles.

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