The movie hits the ground in overdrive, opening with a cliff-hanging present-day scene that then backtracks over the events that led us there. We learn how Domino (Keira Knightley) became the bodacious butt-kicking babe she is today: teenage angst (trading baton twirling for nunchaku practice), followed by college angst (smoking cigarettes and beating up sorority girls), then answering an ad for a bountyhunter seminar in her 20s.
It’s worthless to argue whether the real Domino did the things in this movie (like giving a drug dealer a lap dance to get information). She certainly didn’t do them to pumping rock music. “Domino” portrays Harvey as if she were a streamlined Chrysler dashing over a closed course or a high-tech razor magically mowing down stubble. No sequence, scene or frame goes by that is not drenched to soaking in the techniques — rapid montage, supersaturated colors, flying zooms and pans — favored by television commercials and music videos.
The funny thing is, experience would suggest it’s likely if you asked any of the people associated with the making of this movie what they were going for, they would tell you gritty realism. “Domino” seems to suggest that the high-powered, money-dripping world detailed in movies like Robert Altman’s “The Player” is not a locus of talent, but a world isolated from everyday reality. There were so many potential stories in this person’s history, it’s amazing the movie managed to find none of them. S