domino

The domino of the title is one Domino Harvey, who was a bounty hunter.

I say 'was' because she died of a drug overdose shortly before this film based (very loosely) on her life was released. What also makes her interesting was that she was a rather unusual character, being a not unattractive, fairly slight English girl from a decent background in a rather rough job.

Bounty hunting is one of those jobs that has a weird sort of mystique, even though it's actually a fairly simple activity in the main. By that I mean that really they just go around people who've skipped out on court dates and therefore broken the terms of their bail.

In other words, generally, they're suspected criminals who haven't turned up for their court dates. Now given we're really talking about blue collar criminals - thieves, junkies, con men - that sort of level of crime, you can see how it would be very dangerous (the US is one of the only counties where it's a legal job) and also not really all that glamorous.

It's not like Bobba Fett chasing after Han Solo.

Anyway, the point is with Domino, she didn't exactly fit the stereotype, and much of the film plays on that juxtaposition. It also plays quite a bit to the lowest common denominator, but it does so in a broadly knowing way.

The other key element to the film is that it's by Tony Scott, who has a rather distinctive visual style. In fact, if I'm honest it's this visual style that I enjoyed, rather than the story.

See, the problem with the story is it's one of mounting escalation and it eventually reaches a point where it breaks past credulity. For me, this rather popped me out of the film and from then on it was daft.

Up until then it had been hovering around level of silliness, but not going too far. After that point is was just plain silly and that was a little disappointing. It also didn't help that because it was sort of based on a real person and then segwayed into this over-the-top Hollywoodness. It just didn't fit.

The other thing I was struck by on the negative side was that Kera Knighley didn't really seem to fit the role properly. I think it was her accent - she obviously sounded English, being English, but I think she would have been better taking the edge of her cut-glass upper-class accent. If she'd gone for something regional I'm not sure that would have worked, it's just her accent as was jarred a bit too much.

Overall, I enjoyed the film, but only as a visual spectacle and popcorn action movie level.