Domino

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's fractured and maddening, but it's alive.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A lollapalooza of delectable cheap thrills.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The movie is full of possibilities. Frustratingly, only a few of them are realized.

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.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Among the year's ultraviolent pulp movies, "Sin City" was prettier and "The Devil's Rejects" more focused.

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.

Empire Sam Toy

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

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.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

Sure, it's amusing, but it isn't much more.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Yes, the film is interesting, but it doesn't work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

So over-plotted that it's borderline incomprehensible.

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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Satisfying neither as character study nor as straight-ahead actioner.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

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

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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Domino is less a movie than a hyperkinetic slide show - presented during a nuclear attack.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The truly appalling thing, though, is the stupidity of the screenplay by Richard Kelly.

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.

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.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

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

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.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie is trash shot to look like art imitating trash.

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.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

In small doses, this looks kind of cool. For two hours, it's excruciating.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Staggeringly awful.

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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Domino is a new definition of a snuff movie. It snuffs out every vestige of feeling.