Domino

You don’t normally associate sex, drugs and violence with a Keira Knightley film. Nor, indeed, entertainment.

Typically, the straitlaced star is found in more genteel fare, giddily swooning in wholesome romantic comedies or staid period dramas. But after making her name with a slew of such sappy entertainments (Pride and Prejudice, King Arthur, Love Actually), our Keira had fallen foul of a fate more terrible than missing the debutants ball: typecasting.

Given her unblemished ‘English rose’ appearance and RADA-honed diction, Hollywood merely wanted to truss her up in a corset and have her coquettishly flirt with a succession of floppy fringed twerps. Understandably, Knightley didn’t want to spend her career playing toff totty so deliberately blasted her chaste persona with a canny act of career sabotage: Domino (2005)

The film is loosely based on the life of Hollywood l’enfant terrible Domino Harvey. The daughter of actor Laurence Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate), Domino ditched her dull Hollywood existence for the hedonistic thrill of life as a bounty hunter.

This exaggerated account of her unorthodox career sees our privileged moppet getting out of her depth in LA’s seedy underworld. After becoming unwittingly embroiled in the theft of $10m, she finds herself pursued by the Mafia and the FBI. Can she cut a deal with the mob? Can she escape arrest? Would you like more tea, Vicar?

As the tattooed, chain-smoking, nunchuck-wielding bounty hunter, our Keira wastes no time in gleefully trashing her choir girl reputation. Facing down a gang of heavily armed drug dealers, she defuses the situation by performing a semi-naked lap dance. Later she coolly orders the amputation of a man’s arm before indulging in a mescaline fuelled sex romp in the Nevada desert. At no point during these scenes does she perform an adagio on the pianoforte or suggest taking a turn round the garden.

There’s a guilty pleasure in watching the normally ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ Keira getting down and dirty. And you certainly can’t fault her ‘commitment’ to the part (producers preferred euphemism for actresses getting their nellies out). Unfortunately, the plausibility of her character is punctured every time she opens her mouth. 

With her cut-glass English accent and 18-carat pronunciation, La Knightley can’t quite deliver her lines with the throaty menace you’d expect of someone who tracks down violent criminals for a living. Ray Winstone, this is not. Her posh brogue renders threats like, “Listen bitch, we’ve got your fucking son. Give us the money or we’ll whack his arse” unintentionally comic. Rather than exuding fearful menace, she sounds like a crabby old Duchess, irritably complaining that the staff haven’t cut the crusts off the cucumber sandwiches again.

Unfortunately, other problems start stacking up. The chaotic storyline which is incapable of going five minutes without introducing a new sub-plot is as unsure as Madame Knightley’s performance. The film seems unable to decide whether it wants to be a biopic, action film or a critique of celebrity culture.

Story overload is compounded by sensory overload courtesy of director Tony Scott. Directing with his trademark ADHD style, the viewer is assaulted with a dizzying kaleidoscope of fidgety camerawork, fast cuts, flashbacks, and freeze-frames. And if that isn’t enough to induce a migraine, everyone’s second favourite Scott brother punctuates the action with a pointless voiceover. Adding to the confusion, said voiceover is also plastered all over the screen in caption form. By the time the exhausted viewer makes it to the end credits they’re left longing for some nice, quiet, soothing entertainment: like a Michael Bay film.

Still, this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to filmmaking pays dividend for the viewer when Scott throws in an exploding helicopter.

During the film’s climax, Keira and her group of bounty hunters attempt to cut a deal with the Mob. The negotiations, which take place on the top floor of a hotel, turn sour and a three-way gun battle breaks out between the bounty hunters, the mafia and the FBI who keeping tabs on the situation from helicopters circling the building.

 During the ensuing melee, one of the mafia henchman opens fire at the helicopter, killing the pilot. Without anyone controlling the chopper, it swiftly crashes to the ground and explodes.

Artistic merit 

Given the extravagance with which Scott directs the rest of the film, the helicopter explosion is a most disappointing affair. The chopper simply disappears from view, after which we hear a crash and see a big flash indicating that it’s been blown-up.

One would have thought that Tony Scott would have grasped this opportunity to create an explosive scene of operatic intensity. Instead, there’s no wreckage, no drama, no nothing.

Exploding helicopter innovation 

Sadly, none to report.

Positives 

Every film is improved by the presence of Christopher Walken, and Domino proves no exception.

Cast as a fast-talking TV producer, Walken gives a performance that can only be described as Walken-esque. His idiosyncratic approach to pronunciation – where words are emphasised seemingly at random – make listening to his line readings an unalloyed joy.

Other actors can speak non-stop for half an hour without leaving an impression. Whereas Walken, in one brief interlude here, simply says “Wow” in his own peculiar syntax and steals the whole scene.

Negatives 

Throughout the film there’s a curious motif of a dying goldfish. Indeed, a flashback to Domino’s childhood shows her witness the unfortunate death of her fishy friend, and the adult version wears a goldfish tattoo on her neck. While hardly up there with Sophie’s Choice we’re presumably meant to ascribe some deep emotional significance to this loss of what is essentially a middling fairground prize.

Here’s another theory: many animal behaviourists believe that domestic goldfish are driven start, staring mad by going round in circles without ever getting anywhere. Having sat through this film, I may be beginning to see the significance of the motif.

Favourite quote 

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going? These people paid for a seminar.”

Interesting fact 

Look closely amid the welter of tattoos that Keira sports in the film and you’ll notice a curious reference to Blade Runner, which was directed by Tony Scott’s brother Ridley. Inked across the back of her neck is ‘Tears in the rain’ a nod to Rutger Hauer’s famous speech at the end of that film. Again, the tattoo seems to have no significance to the film, so it appears to be nothing more than an ‘in-joke’ between the two brothers. Hilarious stuff.

Review by: Jafo

A View To A Kill

The one thing that really strikes you when watching A View To A Kill (1985) is just how old Roger Moore looks.  

Whatever your thoughts on the relative merits (or otherwise) of Sir Roger’s portrayal of the world’s leading upper-class psycho-thug, you can’t deny that he made the role his own, and to a generation or two, he was Bond. But here, his craggy features and greying hair almost overshadow his 'double 0' swansong. Not that there’s a great deal to overshadow. 

That's because A View To A Kill encapsulates most of what was wrong with ‘classic’ era Bond: dull storyline, terrible humour, whiney, screaming Bond girls and good actors wasted in villainous roles. 

The plot, such as it is, sees Bond uncover a scheme by the usual, foreign sounding bad-guy, Max Zorin. For reasons the film never bothers to explain, he plans to do some unspecified skulduggery having just designed a microchip capable of withstanding an electromagnetic pulse (a plot point the writers liked so much they revived it for Goldeneye). Quite why MI6 consider this a problem is unclear; surely the government would want to cut a deal with the guy for some fat juicy military contracts?

So, Bond is sent to Paris, because he’s never been there before. After mingling with some French stereotypes, he has lunch up the Eiffel Tower (not a euphemism) before watching Grace Jones skydive off the spindly iron landmark and smash up a Renault 5 (the least sexy Bond car ever).  

Later Bond pays his obligatory visit to the villain's mansion and stud farm (fnarr!) and new characters are introduced to advance the plot. Events continue to happen for no other reason than this is a Bond movie.  

Now, I can accept the 007 films have a successful formula, but this is so by-the-numbers it could be a kids TV show: Bond meets a woman, Bond snoops around, Bond fights a henchman, Bond escapes death because someone decides to engineer an elaborate demise rather than simply shooting him, and so on.  

Moore looking every one of his 57 years

But to make matters worse, having exhausted the Gallic scenery the action moves to San Francisco where the whole French section gets effectively replayed: Bond meets a woman, Bond snoops around.... It's like Groundhog Day remade as a spy film.

Which is a shame, because interesting ideas are cruelly dangled in front of us before being quickly whisked away (like the lovely Fiona Fullerton). There’s a mildly diverting interlude where Zorin torches an entire building to kill Bond, but it’s not long before we have another derivative and pointless car chase. Still at least this one gets everyone to the finale, where Bond discovers that Zorin is going to destroy Silicon Valley to corner the market in microchips… seriously. The whole sorry mess ends with Bond and Zorin having a pretty novel fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge (complete with exploding blimp!). 

All told, A View To A Kill just doesn’t work. We are firmly in deus ex machina territory here, so rather than anticipating events or investigating them Bond just finds himself in the right place at the right time, over and over again. 

The whole film is basically an eighties retread of Goldfinger, even down to the ‘hoods convention’ scene complete with rotating diorama, but with none of the charm, innovation and pizzazz of the earlier film. There’s a fair bit of action, but it’s all marred by the inclusion of schoolboy humour: the use of a Beach Boys sound-a-like playing California Girls as Bond snow-surfs away from some baddies is a series low.  

The Golden Gate climax features some fantastic stunt work, as two stuntmen really do fight on top of the bridge (but were forbidden to actually throw punches), but once again the good work is undone by the accompanying dodgy back projection. And the less said about shagger Roge's shower scene with Tanya Roberts the better. 

Still, it's not all bad. Christopher Walken is rather brilliant as Zorin, clearly enjoying, nay relishing, the opportunity to have fun with a character who is so poorly written.  He also produces one of the most truly shocking moments I’ve ever seen in a PG rated movie, as he and a lackey mow down hundreds of mine workers with Uzis.  

Grace Jones: best henchperson of the Moore tenure

Stacey, too, is dreadfully written, but as Roberts is not an Oscar-winning actor, she just resorts to channeling the spirit of Britt Ekland and screaming “James!” whenever the dialogue runs out (which is frequently). The surprise casting highlight is Grace Jones as Zorin’s henchperson Mayday. Easily the most compelling physical nemesis of the Moore tenure (yes, even Jaws) Jones belies her lack of acting depth by producing a genuine character performance, and one which actually progresses throughout the story.

It’s a sad fact that Moore, like Connery before him, and Brosnan would after, went out on a low. It's easy to think A View to a Kill would have been better with another - crucially younger - actor playing Bond. However, given the campy tone, Moore is actually the perfect Bond for the movie. The real problem is this is just an awful movie, and it's tragic that Moore's finale in the role saw him forced to creak his way through so many sub-Benny Hill gags.  

But, whatever the flaws there's still an exploding helicopter to enjoy, and this one's right up front in the film, finishing off the pre-credits sequence. Before Bond can have his first shag of the day he has to escape some goons who are pursuing him through snowy wastes. 

We're treated to a ski-chase which have been a feature of Bond films from as far back as On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Having shaken off most of his pursuers, a circling helicopter causes our hero some bother. Finding himself without a weapon Roge improvises and fires a flare gun at the whirlybird. As it cockpit fills with smoke, the pilot loses control and crashes into an icy cliff wall.   

Artistic merit 

It’s a nice combination of miniatures, full-size and composites, with the explosion itself towering over a Siberian (actually Icelandic) vista. 

Exploding helicopter innovation  

The Bond producers like to boast about they always try to give the audience the familiar, but in a way they’ve never seen before. It’s fair to say that in 1985 using a flare gun to blind the helicopter pilots was pretty original. Bond also discovers a new element: bulletproof snow. 

Do passengers survive?  

Not a chance, even though they had a couple of opportunities to jump out, as the helicopter bounced around the ground a few times. Maybe they were taking tips from Bond himself, who failed to leap from the Blofeld-controlled chopper at the start of For Your Eyes Only when he had the chance. 

Positives  

The whole snow bound sequence, despite not being anywhere near the best in the series, is the highlight of the movie, comedy musical accompaniment aside. John Barry also effectively recycles his theme from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, creating a brilliant, exciting recurring theme for the movie. 

Negatives  

I never had a problem with Bond mowing down hordes of faceless boiler-suited goons, but when he’s murdering people who are just doing their job in their own country (Bond kills a couple of Russian soldiers) it leaves a sour taste.  

Given the diplomatic brouhaha he caused by storming an embassy in Casino Royale, I would imagine killing troops in their own country would get him something more than a slap on the wrist. It’s also not the most secret way for a secret agent to behave. 

Favourite line 

“You amuse me, Mr Bond”. Not so much the line, but Walken’s delivery is exemplary. You can tell he’s waited his whole life to say dialogue like that. 

Interesting fact  

The producers’ first choice for Max Zorin… David Bowie. That could have been brilliant, but it means we would never have had Walken.

Review by: Joe Scaramanga

You can read more of Joe's work on his own website Now, That's What I Call A Music Blog as he journeys through 30 years of Now compilations.