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| 2.40:1 DVD capture: Domino |
The Film
excerpted from a longer review found here |
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| Buy the DOMINO poster at Moviegoods (click on image) |
Tony Scott's almost literally unwatchable biopic of Domino Harvey, Domino. Ostensibly telling the tale of the titular model-turned-bounty hunter (Keira Knightley), Scott's joint begins with the hipster title card "Based on a True Story. . . Sort of" and goes downhill from there. Far from staid, the picture illustrates nothing but Brownian motion--shaking shit up real good and filming the results for two long hours to a parade of ironic pop songs and barely-heard snatches of dialogue written by someone I'd like to see do better than this, Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly. Domino demonstrates no knowledge of how to tell a story, relying instead on Knightley's ability to sneer and swing nunchucks and Tony Scott's inability to leave any single frame of his film unprocessed. It looks not only like it's been bleach-bypassed to smithereens (for that Fincher feel), but also as though the camera's come loose of its crane and whipped around on cables like a firehose for a few hours.
Flashback to Domino as a little girl then forward to an interrogation conducted by Lucy Liu (the lighting is so ill-advised that nearly every close-up is a death's head of hollow eye sockets and weeping cheek bones) in what appears to be a bank vault, then to some point in-between as someone's arm is put up for collateral in a trailer park negotiation, then to a mob boss talking on a cell phone from the bottom of his swimming pool, and finally to Domino's lazy hardboiled voiceover--which brings the little girl back to punk rock. It's a lot like Jonas Akerlund's repugnant and identically unwatchable Spun: pretty girls playing at ugly in a picture more interested in tableaux than in coherence. Domino meets bounty hunter guru Ed (Mickey Rourke) at a seminar of sorts, but we've already met him in the future along with third wheel Choco (Edgar Ramirez), who has a crush on Domino but is "too shy to say so." (He also tends not to speak English, though he is subtitled for our benefit, I guess.) But Choco isn't too shy to strip down in a Laundromat and, after some Natural Born Killers stuff with murder, rednecks, and mescaline-tripping in the desert, we're too beaten into submission to try to figure out if Domino's coy takedown of Choco's manhood came chronologically before or after their slow-motion tryst.
Trying to describe the plot is the equivalent of just running along, giving a blow-by-blow of the calamitous editing tricks (rack focuses, whip pans, dumb zooms, handheld, you name it), mentioning that the mafia gets involved and a cameo by Dabney Coleman, and translating the half-subtitles that Scott started to do with the now-reserved-seeming Man on Fire. Meanwhile, Mickey Rourke skeezes around in the Mickey Rourke fashion, playing exactly the same role he played in Spun. (For all I know, and for all it matters, they spliced outtakes from that disaster into this one.) Domino, true to the toy that shares its name, is a series of set-ups and knock-downs strung together loosely by the promise that somewhere along the way Knightley's sure to take her top off, bless her heart. I suspect that the film is racist in its depiction of a trio of "sassy Black chicks" led by the insufferable Mo'Nique Imes Jackson, just as I suspect that the screenplay by Kelly is no good, but I'll be honest with you: Domino is impossible to judge in any useful way. It's like critiquing the relative merits of a scream delivered into a vortex: there's so much garble on the line that I can't comprehend even the gist of what's being expressed.-
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The DVD
New Line presents Domino on DVD in competing widescreen and fullscreen Platinum Editions; we received the former for review. The 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is a disciplined rendering of volatile elements, as evidenced by the 'control group' of those two or three shots that don't induce seizures. In other words, no new artifacts were introduced into the image at the mastering level. Blistering is how one would describe the attendant 6.1 DTS-ES soundmix, which, even if we might characterize it as white noise, is not as monotonous as the picture's fever-pitch editing--we never quite become desensitized to the sternum-rattling bass, for instance, because it's deployed with relative moderation. A Dolby Digital 5.1 EX alternative also shines, just not quite as brightly. Director Tony Scott and screenwriter Richard Kelly share a yak-track, though their comments were recorded individually and combined in a vaguely screen-specific fashion after-the-fact. "I hope this film does well," Scott says early on; ouch, replies the viewer. It's amazing how quickly commentaries date themselves--a discussion about obtaining permission to use the WB logo rings particularly ironic, since the netlet had nothing to lose: what Scott didn't know when he recorded this yakker was that the WB was soon to merge with UPN, effectively killing the brand. Defer though he does to sensei Scott, Kelly's string of shorthand references to his only produced film (e.g. "Darko," "Jake and Maggie" (as in "Keira reminds me of Jake and Maggie")) suggests he very much deserved this slice of humble pie. ("I am a director first and a writer second," insists the guy with one movie under his belt.) Worse, Kelly seems to believe he's written a groundbreaking piece of meta-fiction and not simply deposited Domino Harvey into a big dumb action movie of his own hasty creation; Domino is "about" Domino Harvey in much the same way that the mid-'80s Saturday morning cartoon "Mister T" is "about" Mr. T. (He came up with the movie's counterfeit-license storyline while sitting impatiently in the DMV.) Needless to say, Harvey--who would've been played by David Bowie in a movie that was honestly punk--led a life dishonoured by the movie but one ripe for the silver screen all the same.
A second, nigh unlistenable track compiles Scott's pre-production meetings with Kelly, executive producer Zach Schiff-Abrams, and, briefly, Tom Waits--nigh unlistenable because their every decision will prove idiotic, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. (It's like getting to experience your own private "City on the Edge of Forever.") Domino looks truly depraved through the prism of Charles de Lauzirika's humanizing "I Am a Bounty Hunter: Domino Harvey's Life" (20 mins.), in which we meet the real-life Choco and, through not only footage of her hanging around the set, but also an alternate-audio Q&A conducted by Kelly, Domino Harvey (hardly the riot grrrl of Knightley's one-note interpretation)--and learn, among other things, that Domino tried to hide the fact that she was a bounty hunter from her mother, who eventually found out and, fearing for her daughter's safety, gave her a Kevlar vest for Christmas. That's a scene! Alas, Kelly would rather play hipster with pomo references to "Beverly Hills 90210" while Scott jerks off to AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER in the corner. Speaking of which, "Bounty Hunting on Acid: Tony Scott's Visual Style" (11 mins.) is a self-explanatory apologia wherein cinematographer Dan Mindel admits to confiding in Scott during the technically-arduous shoot, "I haven't been this afraid in a long time." Be afraid, Dan, be very afraid. Last but not least, seven deleted/extended scenes, presented in the New Line house style (i.e. anamorphic widescreen, DD 5.1), include optional commentary from Scott. Of a grittier version of Domino and Choco's desert tryst, Scott observes, "That's not a love scene, that's a fuck scene." All I know is it's the only thing preventing me from using this DVD as a coaster. Teaser and theatrical trailers for Domino plus a block of trailers for Final Destination 3, A History of Violence, and "Blade: The Series" round out the platter.-
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
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DVD GRADES:
Image A
Sound A
Extras B+ |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
128 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.40:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1 EX,
English DTS-ES 6.1
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
New Line
What's coming out on DVD? Check the release calendar
Published: March 2, 2006
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