Today’s quick review: Domino. In an FBI interrogation room, Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley), a Los Angeles bounty hunter, recounts her life story to Agent Taryn Mills (Lucy Liu). Her tale meanders through her wealthy childhood, her training under local legend Ed Moseby (Mickey Rourke), and her reality TV deal, all the way up to her latest job, a chaotic affair involving an armored car robbery, the mob, and $10 million in stolen cash.
Domino is a heavily stylized crime drama loosely based on the life of real-world bounty hunter Domino Harvey. Told as a series of flashbacks narrated by Domino, the movie couples a convoluted plot, experimental presentation, and biopic elements to produce a unique crime movie that’s packed with attitude. However, many of the film’s risky stylistic choices do not pay off for it, leaving it a movie with substantial missed potential.
How much you enjoy Domino will depend heavily on how well you like the main character. Keira Knightley’s performance attempts to split the difference between jaded stoic and thrill-seeker, but she gets caught in the middle. Domino’s chilly demeanor undermines her claim that she’s in it for the excitement, while her edgy bluster keeps her from building up any quiet menace. Unless Domino clicks for you as a character, the movie’s central element will be lacking.
The movie also experiments with techniques that are interesting but unsuccessful. The film’s heavily repeated lines are more annoying than stylish, the elaborate camerawork distracts as much as it enhances, and the plot is complicated to the point of confusion. To its credit, Domino’s experiments in nonlinear storytelling and unreliable narration are more successful, but on the whole, Domino’s stylization is a miss.
For all that, Domino has decent production values, a couple of good plot twists, and a solid cast. While Keira Knightley gets mixed results due to the script, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, and Lucy Liu are all fun to watch for the duration they are onscreen. Underneath its tangled presentation and messy ending, the plot has some good ideas. Moreover, Domino attempts to do something new, a failed but worthy attempt to bring new life to the genre.
Ultimately, Domino is a question of taste. If you like stylized, gritty films with plenty of attitude, Domino might just be the rare watch you are looking for. But more likely than not, enough of the film’s many polarizing choices will catch you the wrong way to sour you on it. Check out Lucky Number Slevin instead for a more successful stylized take on the crime genre, or Layer Cake if you want something more serious.
6.0 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.0 to 6.5 for experimentation that largely fails.