Movie Review: Domino
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie isn't for kids. Violent
in content and form, it features murders by a variety of means
(shootings, explosions, knifings, bare-hands and martial-artsy
assaults). Its look is grainy and harsh, and its editing is
very fast and aggressive, matching the storyline. Characters
drink, do hallucinogenic drugs (resulting in a scene in van and
then, after it crashes, in a desert), and smoke, lots. The film
features a lap dance by Domino, and shots of her bottom "crack"
under low-rise jeans, ogled by tattooed bounty hunters at a
meeting.
Families can discuss the familial relationships that develop in the film. As Domino rejects her fashion model mother (and continues to mourn the death of her father), she finds a second supportive unit in the bounty hunters. How does the movie suggest that Domino, for all the difficulties of her life as a bounty hunter, finds a perverse peace and sense of understanding among these rough types? How does the movie use the framing device -- the interview with the FBI agent -- to provide Domino's point of view? Is this an effective device, given the harrowing chaos of the story she tells?
Common Sense Media Review
DOMINO is a brutal, lurid, and romantic take on the life of
Domino Harvey. It's also a compelling film in its structure and
challenge to conventions. But it's not suitable for children
and will trouble some adults.
A model, daughter of movie star Laurence Harvey, bounty hunter, and drug addict, Domino was found dead of an overdose in her L.A. apartment this past June. And she appears at the very end of Tony Scott's raucous film: her shaved head, pale complexion, and large eyes hardly match the movie's version of Domino, perfectly coiffed, extravagantly made-up, and gorgeous, in the person of Keira Knightley. Even as it grants the film an unearned weight, this last portrait, brief and haunting, also underlines the movie's point: show biz kills.
Written by Richard Kelly, the movie comes hard and fast, a two-hour assault of broken bodies, harsh lights, gun blasts, and tabloidy effects. Structured as a jaunty, uneven flashback ("I'll tell you what I know"), it follows Domino -- in her present, bloodied, sultry, and chain-smoking -- as she explains her part in an armored truck robbery to FBI Agent Taryn Miles (Lucy Liu). They flirt throughout the interview, shot in alternating saturated-color close-ups, but it's teaser material (though, the image of Liu sharpening pencils with one of those little plastic devices is not without intrigue).
The movie is not interested in legalities, facts, or justice. While its focus is surely erratic, it might be best described as a reflection on media's exploitative chronicling of crashes between the filthy rich and the dirty underclass. According to Domino, she rejected her fashion model mother's (Jacqueline Bissett) "90210 world," and, following her expulsion from college for breaking a sorority girl's nose, pursued bounty hunting.
