If the story is too good to be true, it usually isn't; and if the story is indeed true, fate and circumstances would conspire to make it stop being good. To make matters worse, Hollywood's adaptations have a tendency to not only distort the truth but also to render the narrative unengaging. Domino, the 2005 action film directed by Tony Scott, is a prime example of this unfortunate trend.
It is very loosely based (and “loosely” is actually acknowledged by the opening credits) on the real-life story of Domino Harvey, the daughter of famed British actor Laurence Harvey and his glamorous model wife Paulene Stone. Her own fame began when she, as young woman, abandonded her privileged upbringing in Beverly Hills to become a bounty hunter on the gritty streets of Los Angeles.
The film opens with a framing device that sees Domino Harvey, played by Keira Knightley, being interrogated by the FBI for her possible involvement in an armoured truck heist that netted a staggering 10 million US dollars. Through a series of flashbacks, the movie reveals how Domino became a bounty hunter and how a series of events led her and her colleagues – Ed Moseby (played by Mickey Rourke) and Choco (played by Edgar Ramirez) – to become entangled in a convoluted plot involving their boss Claremont Williams III (played by Delory Lindo), his mistress Lateesha Rodriguez (played by Mo’nique), Las Vegas hotel tycoon Drake Bishop (played by Dabney Coleman), mafia boss Anthony Cigliutti (played by Stanley Kamel), and reality television producer Mark Heiss (played by Christopher Walken).
Tony Scott had been fascinated by the story of Domino Harvey for over a decade, befriending her after reading a newspaper article about her. However, the time was not kind to Scott's project, as Domino's life took a downward trajectory, marked by serious methamphetamine addiction and federal drug smuggling charges. Tragically, she died from a fentanyl overdose just before the film's premiere. This left both filmmakers and audiences with a problem – how to invest themselves in a story that they knew would not have a happy ending. Scott attempted to solve this by discarding the factual basis of the story, creating most of the characters and events as fictional, including the spectacular gun battle at the end that resembles a similar finale in True Romance.
The script was written by Richard Kelly, best known for his cult science fiction drama Donnie Darko. In Domino, he attempted to use the bizarre true story of a female bounty hunter as a canvas to explore various themes, such as the nature of fame and privilege in Hollywood, race relations, and the predatory nature of the modern reality television industry.
However, whatever Kelly's intentions were, they were ultimately drowned out by Scott's direction, which proved to be unhinged and resulted in an orgy of rapid editing, various "cool" cinematographic effects, flashbacks, unreliable narration, and other aspects of visual styles that made the film confusing for most viewers and tiresome for the rest.
As a result, Domino is a very messy and ultimately forgettable film. While Keira Knightley, thanks to her physique, does an adequate job as an action heroine, her performance is not enough to rescue the film from mediocrity. The rest of the otherwise great cast is less impressive and downright forgettable.
At the end of the day, Domino Harvey didn't deserve such a tragic fate, just as she didn't deserve to be immortalized by this underwhelming quasi-biopic.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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