Domino (2006, DVD)

I tried to give Domino two stars, but I could not think of a single thing that made this movie worth seeing. Not one thing about this stupid movie was worthy of me rating higher than the bare minimum single star. The real shame is that this is based on the life of a real person, which usually makes for fascinating stories. This $50 million movie tanked at the box office, barely clearing $10 million in the United States.

This film is based very loosely on the real life of Domino Harvey, a spoiled rich brat who once was into modeling, then got into bounty hunting. She died of a drug overdose in June 2005, while this movie was being made. At the time of her death, she was facing criminal drug charges from the state of Mississippi, where I am from.

I seriously question the truth behind most of what is depicted in this story. I m sure some of the underlying ideas may have happened, but the whole thing is so glossed over and silly that I didn t care to check the facts. This movie has all the elements of a bad film: dumb dialogue, fairly bad acting, and a general lack of structure. Considering the talent involved in making this movie, I don t know what went wrong.

The story begins with Harvey (Keira Knightley) and her two main bounty hunter pals, played by Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez, busting in a woman s house to find some money. It then backtracks with a brief run-through of Harvey s life and how she got to be a bounty hunter in the first place. Her looks supposedly got her foot in the door, though the real Domino wasn t exactly a looker. She was a coldhearted punk and obviously a lesbian, though this movie portrayed her as straight. I think it would have been better had she been portrayed as a lesbian, because the whole hot chick with a shotgun thing got stupid pretty quick.

By comparison, this film makes the acid tripping look of Oliver Stone s Natural Born Killers seem like a cheesy 60 s era psychedelic video. Director Tony Scott used the same wild technique in Man on Fire, but he went way overboard with this film. It was very difficult to watch, almost like something was wrong with the picture. I can appreciate him wanting to put a little bit of artistic flare into his the look of the movie, but Scott needs to know when enough is enough.

This movie sports a great cast, which is another shame. Keira Knightley was miscast as the tough girl Domino. I think Milla Jovovich or Uma Thurman might have been better. Keira is a great actress and a gorgeous woman, but I just didn t buy her tough girl act. Mickey Rourke plays the same kind of tough guy he usually does, and he s good at it. The supporting cast also includes Christopher Walken and Mena Suvari. Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green, the blonde guy and the short guy from Beverly Hills 90210 play themselves as host of a reality show focused on bounty hunters.

Domino was a mistake. From its casting to its direction to the story and everything in between, the whole movie was off. The DVD does feature a twenty minute feature on the real Domino, including some interviews, but this movie bored me so badly that I didn t bother seeing it. The only compliment I can give this whole package is that the 6.1 channel DTS sound mix on the DVD sounds really good.