MPAA Rated – R
It’s 2:07 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right
| Domino Movie Stats & Links |
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| Starring: | Keira Knightley, Lucy Liu, Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari, Mickey Rourke, Jacqueline Bisset, Delroy Lindo |
| MPAA Rated: | R |
| Released By: | New Line Cinema |
| Release Date: | 2005 |
| Kiddie Movie: | Only if you want your little girl to be a bounty hunter. |
| Date Movie: | If she likes some violence. |
| Gratuitous Sex: | Keira gets naked. It’s kinda artsy, but I’m liking her mosquito bites. It’s rated R and about bounty hunters, what do you think? |
| Gratuitous Violence: | It’s rated R and about bounty hunters, what do you think? |
| Action: | Not really, although you would think there would be. |
| Laughs: | Some pretty good lines. |
| Memorable Scene: | The “Mix-ed Race” Flowchart at the Jerry Springer Show. |
| Memorable Quote: | “He hasn’t aged well.” |
| Directed By: | Tony Scott |
I know it’s sometimes a tough call for moviemakers: Do you take what can be a pretty good action movie and just let it be an action movie, or do you try to make it more artsy, with more symbolism and tricky camera-work, than just people kicking ass? For “Domino,” they opted for the latter, and as much as I could appreciate it, I could have probably appreciated it even more if the story wasn’t so convoluted. I’ll try to give you just enough without giving too much away…
“Domino,” as the opening credits state, is “a movie based on a true story, sort of.” Pretty much Domino Harvey was the daughter of a Hollywood screen star, her father, who died when she was a young girl. That much is true. The movie says that mom tried to stay tight in the Hollywood circles, that Domino was a model and in a sorority, but I can’t confirm any of that. Domino Harvey became a bounty hunter in the movie. That much is true. Then there is the rest of the movie which starts as a story that seems believable, up until the armored car heist.
Alright, as the movie gives us, we see Domino (Keira Knightley) being interrogated by the FBI, agent Taryn (Lucy Liu). Taryn is trying to get the story of what happened to the money in the armored car. From this point it is a series of flashbacks as the “sort of” stuff really starts to take shape. We see Domino shuttled to boarding school, break a nose in a sorority house, dressing kinda slutty, and hooking up with Ed (Mickey Rourke) and his partner Choco (Edgar Ramirez), thus her transformation into being a bounty hunter. Domino is hot, can kick some ass, and there’s some sexual tension between her and Choco. The story is pretty simply, Domino, Ed, and Choco, go about their bounty hunting business, but then get approached by a reality TV producer, Mark (Christopher Walken). He convinces our trio that they should be on a reality TV show about their work as bounty hunters, and they agree.
But there is a problem in bounty hunter land, namely that their major employer, Bail Bondsman Claremont Williams (Delroy Lindo), has cooked up a scheme to get $300,000 for one of his women, Lateesha (Mo’Nique), who needs the money for a lifesaving surgery for her granddaughter. Oddly enough, now the mob, a casino owner, the FBI, and dozens of other are involved, and the story turns from kinda fun and serious, to just a convoluted mess, which I probably could have gone along with if the movie was just normal action fare, but with it trying to be artsy and with a message, I just got tired of following it all especially when some people who are supposed to be dead really aren’t, there had to be an easier way to get into that freezer, and the poor throw money into the air only to see some of it blow away.
Look, I loved the characters. Keira, Mickey, Edgar, and damn just about everyone else were fabulous in all of their roles. Even Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green were great at playing themselves. And damn, Keira even gets naked. But the story, especially as it played out, wasn’t an artsy story at the end, it was an action story and I think should have been treated as such, kinda a “Lethal Weapon” but much darker. Convoluted stories generally work when we aren’t trying to take the movie too seriously, but “Domino” was set up as a serious movie, and a convoluted plot development just falls apart.
In the end, I really wanted to like “Domino,” but just couldn’t, even with the blatant nudity and gratuitous violence. It’s 3 stars out of 5 for “Domino.”
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on Right!! L8R!!!