Summary: Does it really matter what's true or false in Domino if the movie's so deliriously hard to resist? Tony Scott's dizzying film about his late friend, former model and famous bounty hunter Domino Harvey (1969-2005), is more tribute than biography, riffing on Harvey's action-packed exploits and brief reality-TV celebrity in a fractured, manic style that's so visually over-stimulating that it could throw vulnerable viewers into grand mal seizures. Scott's barrage of audio-visual hyperactivity is ultimately exhausting, and Richard Kelly's fragmented screenplay does nothing to discourage Scott's relentless MTV "style" (and we use that word oh-so-loosely here). And yet, with Keira Knightley so ferociously alluring in the title role, and Mickey Rourke (as her boss and bounty-hunting mentor, Ed Mosbey) serving up a second dose of his Sin City comeback, Domino grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Scott's embrace of nihilism is typically facile but it propels a vision of wretched humanity that pulls you in with train-wreck intensity. The movie's bracing humor also makes fine use of a large supporting cast including Christopher Walken, Jacqueline Bissett, Dabney Coleman, Edgar Ramirez, Mo'Nique, Delroy Lindo, Mena Suvari, Lucy Liu, and former Beverly Hills 90210 stars Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green (the latter two poking good-sport fun at themselves as "celebrity hostages"). The accidental overdose death of the real Domino (daughter of The Manchurian Candidate star Laurence Harvey) in the summer of 2005 threw a sad shroud of irony over this movie's theatrical release, but for all its reckless indulgence, Domino is a fitting eulogy for a troubled woman whose credo ("Heads you live, tails you die") is reflected in Scott's fictionalized rendition of the dangerous life she lived. --Jeff Shannon
2003
USA
Domino
