Domino

Watched Domino the other night with Becca—the Tony Scott film from 2005, Keira Knightley playing Domino Harvey. I love movies that are essentially extended trailers, and this thing is pure MTV. It’s shooting and cutting like it has somewhere to be, like it can’t sit still for a second. Everything looks like an ad campaign, all saturated color and aggressive editing and no patience for letting a shot breathe. Scott just lets it run wild.

The story’s loosely based on Harvey’s life as a bounty hunter, but that’s almost beside the point. Knightley’s got this lean, dangerous quality that works perfectly—she moves through the film like she’s one step ahead of it. The cast around her is solid and clearly game for whatever visual insanity Scott’s cooking up. And visually it’s just relentless. Gorgeous, excessive, verging on hostile in how much visual information it’s throwing at you. Most films would apologize for that kind of excess. This one doesn’t.

I’m amazed it disappeared so completely. It came out, made no money, didn’t build a cult. I think because it doesn’t have an obvious audience. Too stylish to be a straightforward action movie, too excess to be taken seriously, too committed to being what it is to be ironic about it. There’s no box for a film like that to fit into.

But maybe that’s the best thing a film can do—just commit to its own vision completely and let the chips fall. Domino didn’t get the audience it should have, but it got made exactly the way Scott wanted to make it. That’s something.