Crimes:
• Spending more than two hours on an overbearing quasi-spoof of our voyeuristic celebrity culture, centered on real-life fashion-model-turned-bounty-hunter Domino Harvey
• Adopting a relentlessly artificial style, with burnished color and attention-grabbing onscreen titles
• Cutting the film every goddamn second
Defenders: Director Tony Scott and writer Richard Kelly
Tone of commentary: World-weary. Scott growls his way through a discussion of his research into outlaws, and sounds completely dispassionate as he explains his attraction to "people who go to the dark side… all chasing their inner souls."
What went wrong: Kelly confesses that his favorite Scott film is True Romance, and he clearly wanted to be Scott's new Quentin Tarantino. He marvels at his own cleverness and hopes that the movie will succeed, "to send a message that something this unconventional and subversive can connect with a mainstream audience." Meanwhile, Scott says Domino is about "exorcising the last of my rock 'n' roll demons," and adds, "My movies are like paintings, and I always try to take something from the last painting and bring it to the next one. Before Domino, I made an Amazon.com commercial."
Comments on the cast: Scott on star Keira Knightley: "There's a little bit of Princess Di in Keira, as there was in the real Domino."
Inevitable dash of pretension: It sounds impressive when Kelly says, "At the heart of this puzzle is a sick little kid without health care. The health-care crisis… maybe that's the most important thing." But minutes later, commenting on bit player Mo'Nique, he says, "At the heart of the puzzle are these long fingernails."
Commentary in a nutshell: During the scene where Knightley strips to defuse a shootout, Kelly chuckles, "This is the height of the absurdity, this lapdance, but it's vintage Tony Scott."