To call “Domino” the ultimate example of MTV-style editing would be unfair, because nothing as crazy has aired on MTV or anywhere else. Director Tony Scott’s feverish new film is as uncompromising in its cinematography as any mainstream action film has ever been.
This is an extreme movie-Scott takes his trademark hallucinatory style and pounds it into the audience with complete abandon, producing an effect intense enough to make Michael Bay look like “Vera Drake” auteur Mike Leigh in comparison.
Scott’s recent films include several trippy experiments in style, including 2004’s “Man on Fire,” and the “Beat the Devil” short in the BMW series. These past endeavors met mixed reviews, but “Domino” succeeds by using an equally confusing and frenetic script from “Donnie Darko” scribe Richard Kelly. The film’s unrelenting camera work, coupled with an idiosyncratic plot, creates a whole film that feels satisfyingly and strangely consistent.
Keira Knightley plays Domino Harvey, the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, who in real life rebelled against her bourgeois upbringing to become an L.A. bounty hunter. The storyline of the film hinges around a makeup- smeared, bloody Domino being interrogated by Lucy Liu's FBI agent character for reasons not immediately made clear to the audience.
The plot, which is far too convoluted to fully explain, is revealed piece by piece in flashback mode during Domino’s drugged up narrations. Her fly-by-night account shows no respect for traditional plot constructs and is accordingly disorienting for the viewer. There are times when key characters are shown being shot, only to have Domino declare later in the film that that was not what happened, and the same scene happens in reverse with the bullets flying out of them, letting them stay alive in the story. This is by no means a thought-provoking film, but the complexity of the plot keeps the audience wondering.
Kelly’s irreverent storytelling fits well with the eccentric Scott. The stylization of “Domino” is pushed so far to the edge that it changes the context of what the audience feels like it is watching.
At one point, Domino describes her boss by saying she never knew much about his background, but notes that he “lost a toe in a prison uprising.” The screen freezes, those words are written on the screen next to him, and the audience must ruminate on just what that means.
Points like this help establish “Domino’s” characters beyond the minimalist approach taken early on in the film. Another example is Domino’s goldfish, whose death, she says, leads to her habit of not getting attached to any living thing. At first the concept seems absurd and funny, but during times of danger, Scott will flash close-up shots of the fish that look in turn grotesque and full of vitality, and the connection to the balance of life and death is clear.
Scott’s style can be repulsive. It would have been easy to imagine “Domino” as the ultimate iteration of that. But thanks to its relentless nature and a corroborating script, “Domino” transcends his past work and becomes something altogether greater.
