Ink Blotting - Domino

Posted on Monday, October 17, 2005 at 12:00 AM

Domino: 2 stars out of 4

I am a geek. One of the signifiers of my geek status is that I have read a great deal of Comic Books. One of the characters in the Marvel Universe happens to be a beautiful bounty hunter named Domino with an amazing gift of 'luck.' I reveal this about myself because the first thing I thought of when I heard about this movie called Domino was that Marvel had made another movie.

That isn't the case. Domino is supposedly based, sort of, on the life of Domino Harvey. A real person named Domino Harvey who was a beautiful bounty hunter with what seems to be a certain amount of luck and pluck. I only wonder if someone somewhere in Marvel Executive Universe had heard of Domino Harvey and based a character, loosely, on her exploits. No one, anywhere else that I have found, has said that, though.

What people have said is that there were large issues with Domino. A great many of them felt that with the sort of real life they had to draw from that something bigger, something better, could have been made than what they saw. Far too many reviewers lamented that the movie's plot could have just been better without specifically stating particular instances.

But plotting aside, the majority is in agreement that the frantic cutting, editing and hyper narration detract from the movie. At one point the characters are on mescaline but rather than distort or disorient the movie in relation to their own viewpoint, nothing really changes, which leaves us wondering if they entire movie is viewed by one on mescaline.

There is an intensity to the film that is attractive. You will never know what to expect in action, relationship and plot. Things will happen and then be undone; characters will say and do things completely unexpectedly. And the audience is definitely kept on the edge of their seats because of this. Domino is much like a rollercoaster. It's enthusiastic and wrenching while you are on, definitely something memorable; but once you have gotten off it's not quite the memory you thought you were going to make.

The feeling of being let down is generally the thrust of many of the reviews of Domino. And it is accurate to a point. Watching the movie you don't just feel let down, you feel dropped on your head. You would imagine that this movie would be about Domino Harvey's life, and it is really about how Domino survived an armored car heist gone wrong. Not a bad story, truth be told, but the commercials and previews for the movie leave you expecting something different than what you see. And it doesn't jive. Reviewers have gone on about crossed genres and mixed styles, but to the average person at the theatre you're probably going to only be concerned that the movie you thought was about Domino Harvey is really about her small part in an armored car heist.

Which is why the movie doesn't work on many levels. Domino Harvey is our focal point. We view the movie through her eyes, and literally through her narration. The movie is decentralized from Domino Harvey as she's only a minor player in the action. The creative team that put the movie together felt the need to at least explain some background of everyone else even remotely involved in the film. Many reviewers have complained about the unnecessary explication and characterization because we are fooled into thinking that this is a movie about Domino Harvey, when it really is about, well I've already said that.

The only other thing that is lacking in reviews out there is a commentary on the disregard the movie had for the FBI. The FBI was everywhere, monitoring everyone. They lied when they needed to and pushed people's buttons to get the reaction they were looking for. It is my opinion that the FBI served as the foil for the movie's plot. And when you go to see the movie keep an eye out for the motivation behind the FBI's doings because were they actually constrained by the law, you would imagine that the final and concluding scene wouldn't have gone down at all unless they were looking for martial justification to have a mafia boss get cut down in gunfire while taking out a white collar criminal while several innocent people look on. I don't think that balances out against the fun in the movie, but hey, maybe exploding and flipping RVs balance that teeter totter.

Kyle Gould is a University of Calgary Graduate in English devoutly trying to make the 25,000 dollar piece of parchment not just a glorified ink blot. Currently it would serve better as a Rorschach test. Feel free to throw some ink his way at wkkgould@hotmail.com.