| Product: |
Domino (DVD) |
| Date: |
11.01.07 (167 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Kiera in an action role, a lot of fun
Disadvantages: The film 'lies' to you, more flash than substance
Domino is a film from Tony Scott, brother of Ridley and currently in the cinemas with Deja Vu. He is a man whose career has been almost as star studded as his brothers but has never quite hit the same critical acclaim. Not to say he doesn’t make good films, he does, or maybe that should be he did. Top Gun and Last Boy Scout are great films but they are long in the past now and he has now seemingly decided to concentrate on star studded action films full of inventive, stylish touches that override any substance. ‘Man On Fire’ did this and now ‘Domino’ follows along the same lines.
It looks superb, it really does, and you can get wrapped up in it’s flash and bang very easily, but try looking a bit further and you begin to realise that there is little else to it. The actual story is a mess and the clever little touches you enjoyed at first begin to grate.
Domino is the true story, sort of, (their words not mine!) of Domino Harvey, daughter of Laurence Harvey a British actor who starred in the original Manchurian Candidate. A rich girl who rebelled against her life of privilege, she had attitude in abundance and became a high class model, she hated that life though and decided she wanted a career as a bounty hunter, so that she could do all the things she wanted to….legally!
Domino starts with the old fractured timeline idea, we start of part of the way through the film, fast forward, backtrack to Domino’s history and then jumps around a bit as we learn what is going on. At first this is quite good but then just gets very confusing.
Domino, her boss Ed Moseby (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez) are a bounty hunting team and the main plot of Domino, the film, is off the team being asked by their bail bondsman employer to find the people who stole $10 million from an armoured car and recover the money for a finders fee. Throw in the Mafia, a big casino boss, a reality TV crew and more and everything gets a bit crowded.
Off course there is more to it than that, a lot more, and the plot does get a bit confusing at time, especially when the film ‘lies’ to you. Telling you something you later find out to be untrue. I hate this; even if there is a reason for it it is just lazy and annoying. Playing with your audiences perceptions of what is happening is good, lying to them isn’t!
The beginning of the film is good, a smart smash bang wallop of a start with the bounty hunters raiding a mobile home and using the arm of a hostage to get what they want. This gets you involved in the action immediately, with it’s fast movement and slick cuts, and when it jumps to Domino being interviewed by a FBI agent (Lucy Lui) and you realise she is telling the story of what happened, not seeing it first hand, your attention is held. The swift movement between the present, recent and long past intriguing you with its possibilities.
Domino’s way off getting employed and her first job are very well shot and quite surprising.
After a while though this format for telling the story, plus it’s convoluted nature and the many sub divisions to it, end up just annoying me.
The involvement of a reality TV show being made about them adds another dimension to the film. Christopher Walken and Mena Suvari as the TV executives and assistant are just not used enough. It is a nice idea that could have added some interesting looks into the nature of reality TV (and with Dog, The Bounty Hunter hitting Bravo right at this moment it looks like someone had done it for real!)
Having said that what the reality TV show idea does give us is the surprisingly good performances by ex-90210 actors Brian Austin Green and Ian (pronounced I-an) Ziering as themselves. They send themselves up wickedly and get plaudits from me for doing so.
It is also really good to see Dabney Coleman again, I haven’t seen him in anything for ages and he shows here he still has what it takes, even though his part is a serious one the casino boss Drake Bishop) rather than his normal comedy role.
The star of the show though is Kiera, who would have thought she could play such a hard-nosed bounty hunter. She manages to exude a violent, brutalness I wouldn’t have expected and copes with all the action and foul mouthed lines without them seeming out of place.
If you liked the flash bang and style of Man On Fire you will probably like this film, but for me it was too much again. The flash and bang took over from the substance and you really needed that to get to grips with the complicated story line. If it had concentrated on that this film could have been so much better.
Written by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) surprisingly!
Finally I will add that as I saw this the same day as the way superior black comedy ‘Guy X’ I may be being a bit harsh. If I had seen it first, or by itself, I may (just MAY mind you) have enjoyed it more.
Summary: fun to watch but over all it is disappointing
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Last comment:
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TheChocolateLady - 17.01.07 See, now I would have put those first too paragraphs nearer to the bottom of the review than as an introduction. They really are more background paragraphs than how I would want a film introduced to me. |
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