Amateur Megalomania

Guy Ritchie, call your office.

I mean, come on. This has to be a Guy Ritchie movie, right? You’ve seen Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, or Snatch? If so, you’ll ‘get’ Domino in the first three minutes.

I loved LSTSB and Snatch. I didn’t love Domino.

Domino is the ‘true’ story of the super-model-turned-bounty-hunter-turned-OD-victim Domino Harvey and her fascinating life. Keira Knightley plays Domino as an improbably petite tough girl, rounding out bounties with her crew of hardened professionals (most notably Mickey Rourke – why is it every time I see Rourke in a movie I feel like I need to take a shower? He’s either a great actor, or really IS a complete scumbag.) Domino is smart, tough, attractive, and certainly willing to put all of her assets to use in plying her trade.

<aside>Hollywood is really on to the attractive-woman-in-male-role bandwagon. The new hot thing is deadly female thugs/heros with the martial skills to take out Bruce Li or Jack Bauer. Not that I’m complaining, but I wonder if the ERA crowd had this in mind? </aside>

The movie clips along at a good pace, and I was entertained for the most part. The above-mentioned Ritchie films straddled a fine line between farce and action thriller. Domino doesn’t accomplish this with nearly as much virtuosity. The farcical elements come across too strong as the movie nears a climax, and I lose the sense of fun that Ritchie manages to inject into some appalling events. Domino just goes too far in the dark humor.

For example, the combination to a safe is tattooed on the arm of a stupid, two-bit thief caught in the middle of a vast Keystone Kop conspiracy. A garbled cell phone call about the combination on the arm comes out at the other end as ‘we have to take his arm’. So they amputate his arm with a shotgun.

Ha ha?

I enjoy a good crime film because I like watching smart people apply themselves to breaking rules. Heist, Ocean’s Eleven (NOT Twelve), The Score, and Thief are all examples of watching gifted people stealing what is not theirs, and in those cases, no one is really hurt. The flip-side is the Ritchie films, where the inherent stupidity of any criminal enterprise is explored through a comedy of errors. All involved get what they deserve, with the innocent largely being spared.

Domino just doesn’t click in that regard. I had fun, but in the end, it merely whetted my appetite for another go at LSTSB.

Filed under: Reviews (Books and Movies)