Domino/A Man Apart/A History Of Violence (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Unmemorable
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Not applicable

Advantages:	A few good action scenes; If you like violence this is for you .  .  .
Disadvantages:	If you don't, don't even botter, you'll feel sick .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

† What you are about to read is a review on a box set that could easily be described in a simple word: Violence…! But as I spend more than 300 minutes watching it, I think I will tell you a bit more about it… Was it worth it? You will soon find out…

† “Domino” (2005) - “There is three kinds of people in the world: the poor, the rich, and everyone in between… My name is Domino Harvey…” (2/5).

Tony Scott is the personification of everything we hate about today’s Hollywood, wouldn’t he be the creator of the blockbuster concept, when he directed “Top Gun”, back in 1986. But there’s something about him that catches my attention and maybe that’s the reason why one of my favourite “worst movie ever” is “The Last Boy Scout” (1991)…

“Domino” is an action thriller freely adapted to the true life of Londoner Domino Harvey, who gave up her career as a model to become a bounty hunter; Domino was the only daughter of Lawrence Harvey (Lithuanian-born actor, mostly famous for his roles in “Room at the top” (1959) and “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962)) and supermodel Paulene Stone.

The role of the statuesque Domino is played by the beautiful Keira Knightley, and the similarities end up here; everything else on this movie is an intrinsic gangster thriller, with non-stop action, a bit of humour by the middle, some hallucinating “trips” and even a strip-tease…

Domino Harvey was a “weird” woman. Soon in life she swapped her easy life for another one a lot more exciting. Incapable to deal with monotony, she tried a musical career and some “heavy” stuff before decide to start capturing fugitives in California, what would allow her to live with the adrenaline legally… Well at least that’s what she used to say (and if it was only that, she wouldn’t have died with an overdose… But that’s what I think). And relating to Domino, the film doesn’t give us a lot more answers than these, since the action movie replaces the intention of a biographical picture.

“Domino” is another exercise of style from Tony Scott. Some criticised “Man on Fire” (2004), claiming it was no more than a stylish empty box (when to be truthful, for me, it’s an excellent movie with an end so bad, so bad that it’s hard to believe); well, indeed, that’s the description of “Domino”. Full of stylish tricks, green filters, rewinds, slow motions and a vertiginous editing with an epileptic aura, so much that in the middle of this entire firework Harvey completely loses herself. This box is so full of polystyrene that it suffocates its contents.

The result is a confusing movie with a very fragile script and with such a weak skeleton that the heavy skin makes us fear it can break at anytime. In “Domino”, Tony Scott’s choices only are really completely right in the soundtrack which counts with the collaboration of The Eagles of Death Metal…

“Domino” is worth it then for some isolated elements like the great cast, with the always genial Mickey Rourke; the “institution” who’s Christopher Walken; and Tom Waits’ cameo, dispensable but even that way genial, in how becomes a divine oracle with the sound of “Jesus Gonna Be Here”.

† “A Man Apart” (2003). – Give me a break…! (1/5).

This must be, probably, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The story is completely predicable, based on the old version of the cop to whom the bad guys kill his loved one and there he goes, kicking and killing everyone till he finds the “Big Bad Wolf”, and of course, gives him the same destiny…

This story has been used so many times in motion pictures that if you aren’t a genius, just don’t do it… Vin Diesel has a performance completely without passion; his facial expressions, just likes the sound of his own voice never change; they are the same, and I mean exactly the same from the beginning to the end… What do you call that?!

The screenplay doesn’t have a bit of creativity, and Gray’s directing, even though it doesn’t have major mistakes, it is incipient. There’s an attempt of originality near the end that with a final twist tries to surprise us, but soon goes back to the same old used formulas.

Anyway, summarizing… Sean Vetter (Vin Diesel) and Demetrius Hicks (Larenz Tate) grew up in the streets of L.A. and work together as members of the US DEA, fighting the war against the drug dealers at the border Mexico/US. Known by their violent methods, their approach gives its results, as they arrest a famous drugs baron named “Memo” Lucero (Geno Silva).

After Lucero is locked up in a high-security prison, Vetter can finally rest from all his hard work with his beloved wife Stacy (Jacqueline Obradors), but soon his peace is gone (otherwise we would all fall asleep…); a mysterious character, only known as “Diablo”, takes over the drug cartel and we are back to action…

So there they go again, trying to identify and arrest this new and dangerous gangster, but when “Diablo” finds out they’re after him, he makes their “war” more personal and kills the only person that really matters to Vetter: The beautiful and unprotected Stacy…

Without anything to lose, Vetter uses everything at his disposition to capture “Diablo”, and even makes an alliance with his old enemy “Memo” Lucero. Nothing in this world will stop him to revenge his beloved wife, and dangerously balancing between the line of justice and illegality, (even if that puts him in the opposite side of the organization to which he dedicated his entire life), he will not rest till he finds out who’s the responsible for Stacy’s murder…

If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t lost anything…

† “A History of Violence” (2005) - Tell me the truth… (3/5)

I won't be too far from the truth if I tell you that David Cronenberg is a director that you love or you hate. Several of his movies can seem "weird" if we look at them as a series of events more or less unique and if we don't try to understand the reason why those images are presented to us in such a particular way. It is in this context that "A Story of Violence" comes labeled as the director's most accessible movie in many years...

But let me get you involved by the movie and soon you will realize that's a Cronenberg's masterpiece by excellence. Looking at the main character on the movie Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), it's his identity (thematic so many times worked by the Canadian director), the main subject of this film; or putting it in another way, how to rebuild a life, trying to forget a past behind that same reconstruction?

Tom Stall lives in Millbrook, Indiana, a small American village (the way how Cronenberg creates the village's environment is another great detail of the movie), he's married with Edie (Maria Bello) with whom he has two children, teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes), and daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes).

The destiny chooses to play with Tom's future and decides to make him a hero... Two armed men try to rob his humble restaurant, and for the sake of his clients, his staff, and his own life, Tom saves everyone by killing the two crooks, in an act of extreme and courageous violence. Tom's elevation as a hero will, however, bring up a past that he has been trying to hide for a long time, a past that not even his family was aware, a past that Tom will try to deny as much as he can.

The first perturbation on the movie is, indeed, the way how Tom deals with his personality/ies (and here Mortensen reaches the top of his interpretation); there's no schizophrenia, but an attempt to keep at all cost Tom Stall’s identity. Why? Maybe because Tom thinks he found the “American dream”: he has an exemplar family, lives in an almost perfect community and he’s happy (there is a reason why Cronenberg insists in showing that during almost 20 minutes (!)).

In this line of though, it’s very important to notice Tom’s relationship with his wife Edie (another great performance), especially in their intimacy. Sexuality is another great subject for Cronenberg, and in this film there’s no exception, and as usual, there’s a message behind these scenes too. The first time they make love, nothing had happen yet, and the scene is a demonstration of an enormous affection. However, in the second time, when Tom’s identity is now a interrogation for Edie and their relationship is destabilized, the scene is a lot more ferocious, even “rough” - Is this another way to questioning the violence in our life and how a past (that, in this case , is exactly of violence), can interfere with the present?

But the question of the violence reaches its biggest interrogations when Tom finds himself forced to face his yore. He reunites then with his brother Richie (William Hurt, who was only in the movie for 8 minutes (!) and managed to be nominated for “Best Supporting Actor” at the Academy Awards!) and ends up doing what is necessary to prevent his past to interfere with his harmonious present.

All this just to find out that that will never happen as the last scene of the movie shows us – Not only because now his family knows his life story, but especially because Tom had to face it after all those years. Tom has now realized that the past is part of human life, either if you try to hide or not.

Cronenberg shoots the violence effects, the past as a portion of the identity, but also questions the safety of your family life, when this one is taken for granted. He questions after all, as Canadian, the myth that many call as “the American dream”…

† Product details:

Actors: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Christopher Walken; Vin Diesel, Larenz Tate, Geno Silva, Timothy Olyphant; Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, William Hurt, Ed Harris.

Directors: Tony Scott; F. Gary Gray; David Cronenberg.

Format: Anamorphic, PAL.

Language: English.

Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe.

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1.

Numbers of discs: 3.

Classification: 18.

Studio: Entertainment in Video.

DVD Release Date: 13.Nov.2006.

Run Time: 330 minutes.

ASIN: B000IFS01I.

Price: £9.87 (Asda.com).

† Special Features:

Domino: Feature length Filmmakers commentary. “I’m A Bounty Hunter” – Domino Harvey’s.

A Man Apart: Deleted scenes. Original theatrical trailer.

A History Of Violence: Acts Of Violence. Scene 44 - Deleted scenes. The Unmaking Of Scene 44. VI.

© pimentelteixeira2007