Hey folks, Harry here and I've been telling y'all about DOMINO for ages now. And I just love that as the test screening reviews begin to sail on in, I can say... "I told ya so" - but then - shit, when ya got a script by Richard Kelly and a film shot by Tony Scott - there ain't no need for Nostraharry to be soothsaying, right? Right. I was chatting it up with Tim League (owner of the original Alamo Drafthouse) earlier today about how we just have to throw a wingding of a wingding screening of DOMINO - cuz the movie will freeze dry our asses it'll be so cool. But hell, that's just me coasting on the excitement of the script - here's someone that has seen the darn thing. What does... Moonhine say? She say a few spoilers - but nothing terribly upsetting in that department. Here ya go...
Hi Harry,
My name is Moonshine, and I am a bounty hunter. Phfft!
Yeah, right. I'm really Moonshine, but the
closest I've come to being a bounty hunter is catching
a flick or two that I figure you and the AICN crew
might be interested in, and this time I know I caught
a big one. Last night, with a few other hundred
folks, I took in one of the first ever screenings of
Tony Scott's Domino at the Bridge Theater in Los
Angeles. I know you've been hungry for this one for a
while, and let me tell ya, bud, YOU WILL NOT BE
DISAPPOINTED!
Consider the ingredients: Keira Knightley as the
hellaciously sexy Domino, Mickey Rourke as her gruff
bounty hunter mentor (and for all those writers out
there falling all over themselves to talk about his
phoenix-like comeback in Sin City, wait'll they see
him in this one), a script by that twisted Donnie
Darko brainiac Richard Kelly, and direction by action
master Tony Scott. The deck seems completely stacked
for this to be great, and except for a few things, I
thought the movie completely delivered.
I know, I know...because I loved it so much, you're
going to have a horde of talkbackers screaming
"Plant!" But I don't give a shit. The studio and
filmmakers here really shouldn't tinker much with this
one because it's a hit waiting to happen.
Here's the set-up. Domino Harvey is a real person,
and this movie is based on her true story. "Sort of,"
as the movie tells us with a wink. Harvey is the
real-life daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, who is
seen in the film in a snippet from "The Manchurian
Candidate" that plays on a television screen in a
taut, but funny, armed standoff. In a flashback, we
learn that Domino's dad died early in her life; her
status-obsessed mother wants to stay wealthy, or
appear so, so she puts Domino in a girl's boarding
school while she tries to find another wealthy
husband; by Domino's teen years, her mom is still
looking for a way to get rich, and moves herself and
her daughter from England to Beverly Hills based on
the success of Beverly Hills 90210 on British
television. A scrapper from a young age, Domino
doesn't fit well into her new surroundings and rebels
at every turn. In a stint as a fashion model, she
gets into a fistfight on a runway. In college, she
clocks a bossy sorority bitch who dares to challenge
her in a hazing episode. But all of this exposition
is really wrapped up in a flashback that last all of a
few minutes. Her aggressive tendencies lead her to
show up for a seminar on becoming a bounty hunter that
she reads about in L.A. Weekly. The seminar is led by
a slick bail bondsman (Delroy Lindo) and his two
bounty hunters (Rourke as Ed, and Edgar Somebody--the
partial credits only gave first names--as Choco).
Domino busts this trio as they're trying to bilk the
seminar participants out of their registration money,
and quickly works her way onto their team by
demonstrating a balls-out attitude and an ability to
kick ass when necessary.
Other than that, I don't really want to spoil much of
the storyline. Suffice it to say that the larger arc
of the storyline is that Domino, like Quentin
Tarantino's Jackie Brown, finds herself in a shady
deal that goes from bad to incredibly bad really fast.
So what did I like about the movie?
The performances, for sure. Mickey Rourke, who's
really on a roll following up Sin City with this one,
is outstanding as Ed, Domino's grizzled bounty hunter
teacher. In real life, Rourke looks like life has
really beat the shit out of him, and that look works
well for the character of Ed. Ed's tired, but seems
to enjoy the job he's doing and wants to get it done
with as little conflict as possible. Knightley's
pretty good as Domino, though I would have liked it
better if the filmmakers had found a better way to
show her vulnerability. As it stands, she's a
hard-ass who it's just assumed you should root for,
and Knightley has fun with that, playing it all
squinty-eyed and tough. Except for a bit about her
fondness for goldfish, and a somewhat weak B-story
that hints at a budding romance between Domino and
Choco, Domino is rarely seen as anything but a tough
chick and I would have liked to have seen something
else that would have reminded me why I was supposed to
care about this woman.
Other than those two, there are suprises galore in the
cast. Jacqueline Bisset plays Domino's flinty,
disapproving mom. Lucy Liu plays a hard-ass FBI agent
trying to get the truth out of Domino, and I think
she's probably the most wasted talent in the film.
She basically gets to play a tough bitch, trying to
push Domino into incriminating herself, and in the end
there's really no payoff with her character. But
that's no fault of Liu's. Christopher Walken plays an
over-caffeinated reality show producer who signs
Domino and crew up for a Cops-like reality show, and
Mena Suvari plays his indulgent lapdog of an
assistant. Walken gets some of the best and funniest
lines of the movie, but he doesn't quite steal the
movie. That job belongs to Mo'Nique, who plays
Lateesha, a hilarious DMV clerk who pretty much gets
everyone in the movie into trouble (she's pretty much
the instigator of the shady deal that goes bad). She
has an extended scene in which she appears as a guest
on the Jerry Springer Show and it's probably the
funniest thing in the whole movie. Macy Gray appears
as one of Mo'Nique's sassy, finger-wavin' friends, and
she's a hoot as well. Dabney Coleman shows up as a
crooked Las Vegas casino owner, and it's nice to see
him onscreen in something other than a kid's movie or
playing some cranky grandpa. Out of absolutely
nowhere, Tom Waits shows up in a trippy scene, playing
a wacked-out preacher, and his absurd but completely
welcome appearance was one of the only reminders to me
that the movie was penned by Richard Kelly. And then
there's probably the two biggest surprises: Brian
Austin Green and Ian Ziering playing themselves.
Walken hires them as co-hosts of the bounty hunter
reality show that Domino frontlines, and as things
progressively go from bad to worse, they find
themselves going from co-hosts to "celebrity
hostages." I've gotta give these guys props for being
able to laugh at themselves by taking part in this
whole enterprise. At one point, Green dubiously stage
whispers to Walken something to the effect of, "You
said this was going to boost my career." Well, Brian,
appearing in this movie just might do that. Both he
and Ian are great comic relief in the midst of some
very intense action.
Beyond the performances, I absolutely loved the look
of the film. If you've seen the trailer, you've
probably noticed the raw, sunburnt look of the
cinematography. That pretty much carries through into
the completed film and it works extremely well.
Walken has a funny line, saying that the network
doesn't like the bounty hunter series pilot, which in
their opinion features too much of Ed and Choco, as
"too many rednecks," but I think that line also helps
to describe the parched, red desert look of the film.
There are couple things I didn't like. There's a sex
scene that appears out of nowhere, and though I'm all
for a little gratuitous nudity and/or sex here and
there, the scene just seems utterly incongruous where
it appears in the film. It quite possibly may be a
hallucination and not a real sex scene, but I just
think it could be lopped out entirely and no one would
miss it or want for it somewhere else in the film.
And then there's the ending. From a climactic armed
battle that seemed far too similar to the ending of
True Romance, to an implausible escape that I think
needed a lot more explanation. I don't want to say
too much to spoil it, but I simply can't believe that
Domino would have survived. And one other slightly
annoying thing is that Domino's "I am Domino Harvey, I
am a bounty hunter" phrase gets uttered so often in
the movie that the chick beside me in the theater
literally said out loud, "No shit, you already told us
that," after about the third or fourth time.
Other than that, though, I think this was a
rip-snortin', fun and funny action flick that should
prove to be the late summer hit that The Bourne
Supremacy was last year.
Hope you get to see it soon, Harry. I bet you'll love
it.
