Occasionally, while doing research for these movies, I will look at the box office returns.  They indicate two obvious things about a given title.  The first is their popularity.  It is easy enough to understand that the more tickets they sold to get butts into theater seats, the more people wanted to see it.  The other is linked to the first, and that is whether or not it lost money.  There does not seem to be a magic formula guaranteeing financial success, at least not in terms of the funds allocated for production versus ticket sales.  For example, recently I reviewed The Imitation Game (2014).  It had a surprisingly low budget of $14 million, especially when you consider the star power in it, but made over $200 million internationally.  It also features Keira Knightley among its cast as the female lead.  Seeing her got me to thinking about an earlier role of hers, also of a real-life person, in Domino Harvey, in the eponymous film Domino (2005).  Keep in mind that inflation affects studios as much as anyone else, and here you have an example where the filmmakers spent around $50 million, but made back less than half of their expenditures.  That constitutes a flop.  Perhaps this review might shed some light on why this happened.

We start this biopic of Domino at the end.  She has been arrested and is being interviewed by criminal psychologist Taryn Mills (Lucy Liu).  The rest of what unfolds is the story of how Domino gets into this predicament.  She had been a young model, following in her mother’s, Sophie Wynn (Jacqueline Bisset), footsteps.  However, between that and being in college, she grows disenchanted with that lifestyle.  So, she moves to Los Angeles to live with her mother, even though it is full of the kind of people she had been trying to get away from in her modeling career.  Seeking to distance herself further from them, she decides to enroll in a course to train to become a bail recovery agent.  If that profession is not familiar to you, then you might recognize its more common name: bounty hunter.  The person she signs on to be trained by is a veteran in the business, Ed Moseby (Mickey Rourke).  He also has a younger partner, Choco (Edgar Ramírez), and their Afghan driver Alf (Rizz Abbasi), who is also a revolutionary.  Ed is not sure of allowing Domino unto their crew, but Choco is smitten with her and eventually Ed accedes.  Domino also feels that she must prove her worth, and gives herself whole-heartedly to her new profession.  Thus, you have the formation of a team that enjoys a run of success tracking down bounties.  She even earns the bounty hunter of the year award, for what that is worth.  The person feeding them contracts for them to pursue is Claremont Williams (Delroy Lindo), a bail bondsman who also runs an armored car business.  It is with him that things get messy.  Actually, this could probably be blamed more on his mistress, Lateesha Rodriguez (Mo’Nique).  She is a grandmother, but not of the usual age, and she manages to get on Jerry Springer.  Her daughter, Kee Kee Rodriguez (Ashley Monique Clark), is not happy with what mom had to say on what I will laughingly call the daytime talk show.  Instead of raising awareness for her granddaughter’s condition, of which she is dying, Lateesha chose to promote some bizarre, alternative race theory.  She has other issues, as well.  As an employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), she makes money illicitly by making fake identification cards for people who pay her money.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is aware of her activity, as well as two people who come to her seeking counterfeit licenses.  They are about to perform a heist on an armored car, the take being $10 million dollars.  Instead, seeing as how she is losing her job anyway, she arranges to steal the money for herself and her family.  Unfortunately, Claremont learns of the heist, and more importantly, that they have stolen from some powerful people, namely Drake Bishop (Dabney Coleman), owner of the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino.  As for the pilfered cash, it ends up in the hands of Locus Fender (Lew Temple), the getaway driver hired by Claremont.  Furthermore, the men who had originally been planning the robbery turn out to be connected to mob boss Anthony Cigliutti (Stanley Kamel).  Claremont’s solution for all this is to have Domino, Ed, and Choco essentially arrest the four, and return the money to Drake at his hotel.  Claremont has worked out a deal for a $300,000 finder’s fee, which would cover Lateesha’s granddaughter’s operation.  This would seem like a tidy way of wrapping up these complex proceedings had it not been for Anthony’s children being the ones originally set up by Lateesha.  Them dying did not help, either.  Domino and her crew are aware of the trouble they are in, and decide to take hostage the celebrities that had been filming their work as part of making a show about this female bounty hunter.  With another side adventure in the desert (which I will discuss a little more in a moment), it is on to their fated rendezvous at the hotel.  Before this happens, Domino arranges to have the money delivered to Lateesha for her granddaughter’s surgery.  The planned exchanged literally explodes in their faces. First, Alf replaces the cash in the bags with explosives, sending the funds instead to Afghanistan.  Then, with an already tense Drake having a number of armed men on hand, Anthony arrives with several more people with guns.  In the resulting shootout, Choco and Ed are mortally wounded, and they and Domino barely make it to the elevator before the bomb goes off.  In the process, Choco and Ed die, leaving Domino to face the questioning from the police.  As it turns out, Domino is largely innocent of any wrong doing, and Taryn lets her go with a warning to find another line of work.

If my description of Domino is hard to follow, it is because the plot is a bit convoluted.  It is also hard to approach from a Catholic point of few.  There is liberal drug use and sex, giving it a well-deserved R rating.  I feel for Kee Kee and Lateesha and their concern for their child, but that does not justify criminal activity.  God does not promise a life free of trials and tribulations.  It is also hard to tell somebody going through difficulties that Faith has its own awards.  Yet, there is a strange moment that stirred my Catholic imagination.  At one point, the recreational vehicle (RV) in which the bounty hunters are traveling crashes, the result of all of them consuming coffee spiked with hallucinogenic drugs.  Stranded in the dessert, and high out of their minds, Choco and Domino give in to their lust for one another.  In the aftermath, they are visited by a man (Tom Waits) in a Cadillac convertible.  He stops to talk to the lovers, calling Domino an angel of fire, and that they must lay down their lives for Lateesha’s granddaughter.  Now, because they were under the influence of illegal substances, I have my doubts as to whether this is meant to be taken as having actually happened.  At the same time, it reminds me of visions that different people have had of God.  Please understand that I am not saying that you need to do drugs in order to have this sort of communication with the Divine.  Such substances deceive the senses.  The experiences that you can have, and do occur, when you are sober are far better.  What I am interested in is how, if you can call it a message from God, the driver takes a form they would recognize.  God interacts with everyone in a way that only that person can understand, if you choose to notice it.  Finally, Choco and Domino are given a selfless mission.  This sounds a lot more like the kind of thing God would ask of us.

I cannot remember what I got out of watching Domino in the first place.  I definitely see it differently now.  The cinematic and real Domino Harvey were deeply flawed individuals.  The sad reality is that the real-life version committed suicide before the movie premiered.  Hopefully, I have given you enough in this review for you not to watch it.