The real life story of Domino Harvey is an amazing tale. The daughter of a Hollywood actor and a former supermodel, Harvey chose to live the wild and dangerous life that her parents’ wealth could afford her. She was thrown out of schools, got involved with drugs, might or might not have had a modeling career, ran a London night club, worked as a ranch hand, became a firefighter, worked as a Los Angeles bounty hunter, was arrested for drug possession, and eventually died this past summer of an accidental overdose of the pain killer Fentanyl. Harvey was only 35. Her life reads like a blockbuster Hollywood screenplay.
“Domino” screenwriter Richard Kelly (“Donnie Darko”) and director Tony Scott (“Top Gun”) apparently do not think so.
In “Domino” Scott and Kelly have decided to create a movie around Harvey rather than a movie about her. Sure, the Harvey character, played by Keira Knightley, is still a bounty hunter and daughter of the late actor Laurence Harvey and former supermodel Pauline Stone. She is still a problem child who loves guns, drugs and violence and whose mother remarries one of the founders of the “Hard Rock Café” restaurant chain. She still lives life to its limits and never backs down from dangerous situations. But this movie is not about her, it is a convoluted story involving an armored truck robbery and containing plot elements that include: a sick little girl, reality television, a love triangle, the mafia, “Beverly Hills 90210,” Tom Waits, an Afghanistan freedom movement, a Las Vegas casino, bounty hunting and everything else that Kelly and Scott could pull out of their collective asses. This movie is an utter mess.
The film’s narrative works as an odd mix of flashbacks, narrations, and the present time. The film’s story is narrated by Harvey during her interrogation by FBI agent Taryn Miles (Lucy Liu). Harvey tells Miles how she became a bounty hunter and why the armored truck robbery went wrong. During the course of the narrative the audience is introduced to an assortment of quirky, generic and asinine characters, who only help to push along the film’s already dim-witted story. Such characters include: Ed (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez), Harvey’s bounty hunter partners; Mark Heiss (Christopher Walken) a reality television creator and his secretary Kimmie (Mena Suvari); Lateesha (Mo’Nique Imes-Jackson) a DMV teller and self proclaimed “blacktino;” and boundless others, including a handful of awkward cameos by music and television personalities.
There are many problems with “Domino” but perhaps the most glaring is the movie’s inability to narrow its focus on one subject. This movie wants to make a statement about everything from reality television and fame to loneliness and the inability to cope with death. This movie is more sporadic and less on the mark than a drunk game of darts. It aims to be about everything and anything. It lacks focus and coherency, it is lost within itself.
It is apparent that both Kelly and Scott have no idea what this film is about, perhaps that is why Scott uses a truck load of visual and audio gimmicks to keep the audience interested in the film. His use of different film filters and stocks, editing styles, special effects, and ridiculous shooting locations combined with the film’s annoying soundtrack is enough to give even a comatose patient a seizure. The direction is worse than the story. In fact the only good thing about this film is the acting of Rourke and Walken, who make any scene that they are in more than bearable to watch. With Ed, the audience is treated to the classic “bad ass” character Rourke plays so well and as Heiss, Walken amuses everyone in the theater with his vintage goofball persona. It is a shame that both men are only given limited screen time.
“Domino” is a train wreck of a movie. It sucks harder than a Shop-Vac. It takes the concept of style over substance seriously and uses the adage to bludgeon its audience with ridiculous visuals and an aggressively terrible story. It is mesmerizing that the real Domino Harvey agreed and even helped create this movie. She picked songs used in the soundtrack and even OK’d the film’s script. This is sad, because this film makes a mockery of her life.
