Harry really wants to play with DOMINO all night long!!!

Wow, time flies… This is the week DOMINO hits, meant to get to this review before FANTASTIC FEST got here, and now that has come and went. Sorry about the tardiness here.

DOMINO is one hell of a film. I first started talking about this film in February of 2003 when I reviewed Richard Kelly’s script for DOMINO. It was his script and as such a towering work of genius as usual. It read as a satiric riff on TRUE ROMANCE and Richard had told me that Tony Scott was set to direct it. Whoa! I actually couldn’t imagine what that film would be like. With Kelly’s script – you had a chaotic mildly Kaufman-esque riff on Tarantino-ism with a macha chick in the center. This was one hell of a ride, but what would Tony do with it. Would he water it down and make a watered down version – or would Tony leap off the bridge for the visceral thrill of the material?

Well, he leapt off the bridge, but he rigged it to blow-up behind him. As you can see from the trailers – DOMINO falls into the realm of stylized filmmaking with the saturated dripping trippy colors and the hyper sharp focus and a degree of being perfectly over-exposed. In fact – everything in the trailers is very near a tripped up image or movement. It wasn’t at all the look I thought I’d see with this movie.

But then, I’m not Tony Scott. He took the draft of DOMINO that I read and began to just bring all those elements of satire and craziness and he just went shook it up into something that doesn’t fit into the typical cookie-cutter cinema we see today.

The frenetic fever dreamed look and feel of the film is actually integral to the story we’re being told. The most lucid and calmly shot sequences of the film focus upon Keira’s DOMINO while being interrogated by Lucy Liu’s Fed character. It is in this interrogation that we flashback upon the mescaline laced memory of the heavily dosed title character’s adventures and life.

We’re taken into the memory of a sexy confused girl of privilege that bored with the thrills for sale decides to become a bounty hunter, because that’s just so cool. SO – from that stand point, realize that this movie is being told from the mind of a drugged thrill seeker, who deep down wants to be a bad girl treated right. In Tony’s hands Keira is, as always, the luminous beauty that we’ve come to pant after… but she also seems believable in everything she does. When you see her doing her Bruce Lee thing, and playing with knives and a shotgun – and a pair of machineguns… she just looks like one of those girls from the old letter page of FILM THREAT magazine that had punky girls with guns. She’s awesome.

She’s also trying to find a new family, a place that she belongs and feels natural in, and wouldn’t we all like to call Mickey Rourke “Daddy” – I mean, who else would you like to have teach you to kick ass and that would watch your back when you break down the door of a gangbanger’s crib? That reminds me. Mickey Rourke. Isn’t it just heaven to have him finding his center again as a bad ass on screen? When Edgar Ramirez comes back stung by Domino – to talk with Mickey’s character – who’s laying in his hotel room watching Porn… What follows is just perfect Mickey Rourke. Know what I’m saying? He’s given dialogue that pops. And with that gravelly voice, he adds all the right sizzles. Right now, I think Mickey has found that perfect place in his career. He’s found his pace, his rhythm now. When he swaggers on to the screen he has so much just strength of character that I find myself absolutely captivated by his every word and gesture.

He’s partnered up with a strapping young badass called Choco played by Edgar Ramirez. This is his first part in an American made film, and he is absolutely awesome. His physicality is fantastic, the way he seems to just throw himself into action and into scenes. He’s an amazing performer. His character is just a slow burn – a destructive violent man that has, thanks to Mickey’s Ed, found a way to use that penchant for violence in a productive way… as a bounty hunter. He’s very very cool. His method of Arm Amputation is perhaps one of the most wonderful scenes of mayhem onscreen. In fact, anytime that Choco is onscreen – you’re always a half shake from Edgar doing something very extreme. He always takes the most direct, brutal and cruel fashion to “do the right thing!” This may be our first look at an actor that we’ll be admiring for sometime to come.

The charisma between Edgar Ramirez and Keira Knightley is very much palpable onscreen. Keira smolders in this film, and in their, ahem, scene together – you fanboys that own THE JACKET just for those great wonderful love scenes… well we get more of that here. And what can I say, Keira is absolutely lovely. I know she’s our sexiest tomboy beanpole, but that comment is almost nearly in this film and ya know… this is definitely the most tomboy she’s been, so why is it that she’s shedding that tomboy awkwardness in favor of alluring sensuality. It is nice to see that continuing to develop.

If this film’s helter skelter visual ferocity was all this film was about, it would be empty. However, you know at the heart of this film is Richard Kelly’s script and the style and the visual explosion… well it’s all there serving the script and vice versa. Richard’s writing married with Tony’s visual skill made for a fantastic match. I haven’t seen Tony this energized with material in quite some time, and the resulting film is a blast. You see, look at the cast for this… beyond those I’ve already spoken about there’s just an amazing ensemble cast.

Take Christopher Walken’s TV producer Mark Heiss… He’s fun as hell here. Lucy Liu, she’s kinda creepy cool. Jacqueline Bisset – she’s got almost zero screentime, but I ached for more and more. Then there’s Macy Gray and Mo’Nique who are absolutely hilarious in the film – but also very heartfelt. Then there’s Delroy Lindo who can be cool in Austin in August. And perhaps the coolest acting in the whole bleeding film is done by Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering. I know that saying a couple of 90210ers were the coolest acting in the film, doesn’t bode well for many of you, but in playing themselves – they were free to laugh at the image that’s hung on both these two since landing on that show. Their moment in the elevator near the end is one of the funniest honest moments on film in a really damn long time.

Then there are, the surprise people that show up through the film. The dialogue from Mars that just absolutely makes everyone in the theater’s jaw drop and at one level be offended… and at another level you’re laughing because you can’t believe you just heard what you just heard. Or saw what you had just seen.

Whether you’re going shooting shotguns afterwards or not, this film is fun. At its heart, the film is essentially a Keira Knightley exploitation film. It features her doing a lap dance, doing the naked wild thing in the desert, shooting shotguns, blowing shit up, talking tough and taking names! Now, it doesn’t go absolutely wacko like those awesome through the roof rough films of Pam Grier… this is more polished, bigger budgeted, better cast exploitation. This is an old fashioned NEW LINE film, like the ones that made the company, only with a 21st Century polish and I really really dig that. Hopefully you will too!