Someone stop Tony Scott. Please. With Domino, the Top Gun auteur takes his in-your-face stylistic mannerisms to new lows, twitchily breaking up every shot with five unnecessary cuts, randomly flip-flopping between different film stocks, mixing distorted voiceover with thumping techno noise, and generally calling attention to his own behind-the-scenes presence whenever possible. Which is always. Written by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) with the kind of jumbled chronology, sizeable ensemble and murder-drugs-money narrative meant to recall True Romance – Scott’s prior adaptation of a hotshot screenwriter’s script (in that case, Quentin Tarantino) – the film charts the “sort of” true story of Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley), the daughter of Manchurian Candidate star Laurence Harvey who spent her professional life working as a bounty hunter. The overblown depiction of Harvey as a punk-rock richie rich with no compunction about flaunting her ass meshes perfectly with Scott’s superficial mise-en-scène, and though Knightley gives it her best snarling effort, her performance is ultimately all phony riot grrrl posturing. One-dimensional cooler-than-cool hamminess is, in fact, what’s delivered by virtually every cast member (including Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari, Jacqueline Bisset, Delroy Lindo, Mo’Nique, Lucy Liu, and 90210 alums Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering), the notable exception being the inimitable Mickey Rourke as Ed Mosbey, a legendary bad-ass bounty hunter with a smile that veers, with quicksilver quickness, from fatherly kindness to frightening cruelty. Someone rescue Rourke from such all-sizzle, no-substance junk and give him a decent starring vehicle. Please.
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