Domino

—1. Overview (multimedia)
—2. Overview Basic (dial up speed)
—3. Reviews and Blogs
—4. Cast and Crew
—5. Photo Pages
—6. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—7. Posters (Keira Knightley)
—8. Production Notes (pdf)
—9. Spiritual Connections

Don’t tell bounty hunter Domino Harvey she has father issues. She’s liable to punch you in the face. She bloodies two noses in DOMINO, a violence-filled, hyper-kinetic , sort-of- biopic. Kiera Knightly pouts in her best bad girl way, turns her back on the privileged life as the daughter of Hollywood actor Lawrence Harvey, and learns numchuck skills to kick some serious tail. Bored with the shallowness of material excess and craving a family that understands her, Domino (a failed Ford model) approaches bounty hunters Mickey Rourke as Ed Moseby and Edgar Ramirez as Choco and tells them she wants a job.

Impressed by her moxie and ability to disarm dangerous thugs with her looks and sexuality, they add her to their team. The trio entangles themselves in a thick plot involving a very sick child, a TV reality show starring Beverly Hills 90210 alumni Brian Austen Green and Ian Zierling, a 28 year old grandmother, a mobster with 2 delinquent college age sons and a $10,000,000 heist. Shuttling the trio around to each stage of the adventure is a bomb-loving Afghani driver named Alf.

This ain’t a proper Englishwoman version of Kiera Knightly. (She comes later on with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.) This Kiera complains, swears like a sailor, throws knives, and rages at the world. While correctly rejecting the vain materialism surrounding her, she acts out her rage inappropriately. Because she never finds peace, her story becomes tragic. (In fact, in real life Domino Harvey died in the summer of 2005 of an apparent drug overdose.) Kiera even goes topless, has sex with Choco, and gives a lap dance to one of the armed thugs.

Rourke and Ramirez act well, as does Mo’Nique. Alf (Riz Abbasi) needs more screen time. He’s certainly the most interesting of the supporting cast. Overall, the movie suffers from too many characters. They unnecessarily complicate the plot and tease the audience for more but don’t deliver.

Photography is reminiscent of director Tony Scott’s recent MAN ON FIRE, all high contrast colors. Thematic similarities can also be found in NATURAL BORN KILLERS and TRUE ROMANCE. The MTV style quick cut editing is understandable given the edgy nature of the story, but it quickly tires the eyes.

The movie raises questions of family, acceptance, and encouraging unconventional gifts. It correctly rebukes the rude sorority culture and the materialistic Hollywood culture. Domino, herself, displays a sort of Christian faith, but its unguided and undeveloped.

Every girl (and boy) needs the love of a father, Ironically, if Domino received this kind of love, her life would be more stable and hence, not as dramatic. God calls each one of us to a holy adventure, sometimes even filled with danger, but our weapons are love and truth, not guns and numchucks. DOMINO has fleeting moments of sheer brilliance, but it remains mainly a novelty story of a girl with daddy issues that never resolves.

— Overview

Two for the Money

—1. Overview (multimedia)
—2. Overview Basic (dial up speed)
—3. Reviews and Blogs
—4. Cast and Crew
—5. Photo Pages
—6. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—7. Posters Matthew McConaughey
—8. Production Notes (pdf)
—9. Spiritual Connections

How responsible are you to your clients for bad advice that makes them lose their homes and dignity? Can you trust your new protégée with your wife? How far can you push your protégée before he begins to resent you? How much of the world can you gain before you begin to lose your soul? These and other questions lie at the heart of TWO FOR THE MONEY. On the surface, the movie is about sports gambling but underneath the obvious, it’s about building and losing a family structure on lies.

Matthew McConaughey plays Brandon Lang, a washed up former college football quarterback with a knack for picking winning college and pro football teams. Al Pacino plays Walter Abrams, a sports betting bookie that plucks Brandon out of obscurity, gives him a new name, and grooms him to become a sports predicting god. Though initially a fine fellow, Brandon begins to alienate his real family and compromise his own values. Throughout it all, he discovers just what sort of boss he has and what sort of racquet he’s fallen into.

Brandon discovers Walter bought him a hooker and a thousand dollar bottle of wine. When Brandon teases Walter to give him more money as a commission for a win, Walter pulls him close and threatens him with vitriolic words. Walter even fakes a heart attack to test the loyalty of his new star player.

The better Brandon does, the more rewards he receives. Starting on the first floor as a mere voice on a 900 line, Brandon goes up to the second floor where the real action is, culminating in picking multi-million dollar bets from the world’s biggest sports gamblers. Eventually, Brandon must decide if to “stay in the game� or punt after a series of emotional crashes. When a client calls to tell Brandon he has lost everything, Brandon must do some extreme soul searching. With expert dialogue and great acting, (especially by Pacino who seems to chew scenery with the greatest of ease), TWO FOR THE MONEY is essentially a morality play on the dangers of toying with money, lives and relationships. At the start of the movie, Brandon says in narration that his father worshiped sports as a religion. Brandon goes on to say his intentions with sport are more pure, but inevitably, it all goes awry again. The ending is reminiscent of another Pacino classic THE GODFATHER. In that epic, Pacino baptizes his son in the Catholic Church, while members of the Corleone family waste away human lives in hails of gunfire. It’s a masterpiece of editing, juxtaposing the sacred and the profane. Here, not two but three actions inter-cut and play out, as a football team wins, Brandon walks and Walter discovers a secret. The result, in this movie, is not quite effective, but still brilliant.

Whether you like this movie or not depends on how much you like sports, gambling or Al Pacino, all three depicted to the extreme. Gambling erodes human dignity, no doubt, and it’s a message worth telling. With lots of foul language and dubious morality exhibited, you may wonder if you need to wallow in this spiritual/moral muck to know that it’s dirty.

— Overview