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Domino
New Line Cinema
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity and drug use
Starring
Keira Knightley,
Mickey Rourke,
Edgar Ramirez,
Lucy Liu,
Mena Suvari,
Christopher Walken,
Jacqueline Bisset,
and
Delroy Lindo
Smart. Daring. Defiant and dangerous. As well as beautiful. This is Domino Harvey and this is her real life story...well, sort of. (New Line Cinema)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Adventure
|
Comedy
|
Drama
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Richard Kelly (also story)
Steve Barancik (story)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Tony Scott
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 21, 2006
Theatrical: October 14, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
128 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France / USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
It's fractured and maddening, but it's alive.

70
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
A lollapalooza of delectable cheap thrills.

63
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
The movie is full of possibilities. Frustratingly, only a few of them are realized.

63
TV Guide
Ken Fox
It now seems that style has completely replaced substance in Scott's films, and he leaves gaping holes in his heroine's character.

63
New York Post
Kyle Smith
Among the year's ultraviolent pulp movies, "Sin City" was prettier and "The Devil's Rejects" more focused.

60
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
It's good sleazy fun for a while, jacked up with an assortment of edgy visuals, but the greenish yellow tint favored by action director Tony Scott is a good metaphor for the movie's jaundiced sensibility.

60
Empire
Sam Toy
Individual sequences are all impeccably assembled, Rourke's grizzled vet chips in some memorable deadpan dialogue.

50
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Thanks to dynamic performances by Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez and a strong cast -- sometimes all but buried beneath irksome stylistic flourishes -- this dark and absurd melodrama certainly has raw energy.

50
Dallas Observer
Luke Y. Thompson
Sure, it's amusing, but it isn't much more.

50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Yes, the film is interesting, but it doesn't work.

50
Film Threat
Stina Chyn
When a film is more conducive to a scholarly dissection than a consumerist examination, the film is incredibly clever, pragmatic, or pretentious. In the case of Domino, it's all of the above.

50
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
Features one of the more pointless cameos ever when Tom Waits shows up abruptly in the desert to spout mystical nonsense about Domino trading her life for somebody else's. The scene has absolutely no place in this jarring, violent movie; Waits is just another of Scott's distractions.

50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Domino should have been a terrific anti-heroine, but the movie never gets deep enough inside this walking time bomb to reveal what makes her tick.

50
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
The picture is an exercise in exploitation joi de vivre, and your enjoyment of it will depend on your tolerance for shameless, reckless, unredemptive violence with relatively little artistic or spiritual value. After all, there's a time and a place for everything.

50
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
It's not so important to follow plot twists--I couldn't--but the emotional thrust Kelly and Scott want to drive home is plain: Once Domino is asked to use guns and knives and nunchucks for a purpose outside the law, she's alarmed, appalled, aghast.

42
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Given the decibel level of this movie, it's a miracle that these guys were able to give creditable performances. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the achievement: Imagine delivering a stirring rendition of the Gettysburg Address while standing under Niagara Falls.

40
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
So over-plotted that it's borderline incomprehensible.

40
LA Weekly
James C. Taylor
Scott's lack of faith in the script is all too evident -- in most scenes, the lines are so dull, he has to up the ante of his already-infamous attention-deficit style.

40
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Satisfying neither as character study nor as straight-ahead actioner.

40
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
It's like a ferret on crystal meth that belatedly discovers ecstasy, and it's a tiresome trip either way.

40
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
The reality-show producer played by Walken is described by his assistant (Suvari) as having the attention span of a "ferret on speed." I'm sure he would love Domino.

38
Premiere
Peter Debruge
I suspect Scott sees Domino as the ultimate provocation, his way of grabbing Hollywood by the throat and shouting, "You want reality??! I'll give you REALITY!!!" Sort of.

38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Stephen Cole
Scott means for his entertainment package to be hip, hysterical fun. But his stylistic embellishments and indiscriminate appetite for sensation crowds his title character right out of the film.

38
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Domino is less a movie than a hyperkinetic slide show - presented during a nuclear attack.

38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The truly appalling thing, though, is the stupidity of the screenplay by Richard Kelly.

38
USA Today
Mike Clark
You can't accuse this film of bogging down in cheap psychology, yet you come out dissatisfied and without a clue about what made this person tick.

38
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
The movie is quite off its rocker: Jerry Springer, Chrisopher Walken, Tom Waits as a roadside prophet, a miscast, nervous Lucy Liu as an FBI agent -- it's a feverish, violent jumble that's shot as if high on mescaline -- the drug, not the salad.

30
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
The script, allegedly by "Donnie Darko's" Richard Kelly, throws together tangentially related plots like cats in a sack.

30
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
Domino de-emphasizes the human element--not to mention such niceties as plot and clarity--to such a degree that only those who show up purely to watch combustibles go "boom" won't feel insulted.

25
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie is trash shot to look like art imitating trash.

25
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
His [Director Tony Scott's] pornographic lust for bloodletting, gunplay, and out-of-control camerawork far exceeds his abilities to tell a story.

25
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
In small doses, this looks kind of cool. For two hours, it's excruciating.

25
San Francisco Chronicle
Walter Addiego
Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.

0
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Staggeringly awful.

0
Slate
David Edelstein
Domino seemed to me the end of the world for movies--a glimpse of a future so excruciating that I'd prefer to take my chances with Hitchcock's eye-gouging avians.

0
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Domino is a new definition of a snuff movie. It snuffs out every vestige of feeling.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.7 (out of 10) based on 46 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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