Review of Domino (1982) by Sébastien D — 17 May 2011

'Domino' is a film based on the true story of the bounty hunter Domino Harvey. In the film Domino is played by Keira Knightley. The film's timeline is mixed up, I've seen this done in so many films, we skip back and forth between past incidents and present day, slowly building up a picture of what happened in the past to cause the present, 'Domino' doesn't do this brilliantly. The present scenes involve Domino being held in an interrogation room by the FBI, she's being investigated to do with the theft of $10 million! Lucy Liu plays the interviewer.

We then see past events to do with how Domino became a bounty hunter at a seminar, we meet fellow bounty hunters Ed (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez), they are all hired by Claremont (Delroy Lindo) who is a bail bondsman who runs an armored car business as well. The main body of the plot is centred around Claremont's mistress Lateesha (Mo'nique) and her grandchild who has a blood condition. They come up with a cunning plan to do with a $10,000,000 robbery and a finders fee for the bounty hunters which will secure Lateesha's grandchild an operation/therapy. Claremont sets up a robbery with one of his vans and it's driver whilst at a local DMV Lateesha gives out some fake IDs to a man whom they will later use as the fake robbers. But they use the wrong people to cover up their inside job, the mafia children, sons of Anthony Cigliutti, this leads to a shoot out on top of the Stratosphere Hotel.

The films style isn't the best I've ever seen but it is above average. The film is complicated and un-organised at points, the plot is good but you do wonder how much is true? Domino (Knightley) narrates well throughout which goes half way to keeping the film together. The best acting comes from Keira Knightley and Mickey Rourke (who I quite liked in this). The twists are minor and not really shocking. There are some dark laughs along the way, an example is when the driver of the getaway van, gets his arm unnecessarily chopped off and Domino breaks a cocky actor's nose.

The references to goldfish are made throughout and we see that Domino's goldfish dying when she was young is a parallel to the ending. This is an average action film with some good points but with little organisation, it's stylish and a fun watch but I won't be watching it again!