Tag: crime

Police Women of Broward County

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★★★½
“Mums with guns.”

Twenty years ago, Cops debuted on Fox, and has become a part of the cultural landscape, leading to an avalanche of spin-offs, ranging from the serious to the complete spoofs (Reno 911 being the most notable). The very first episode took place in Broward County, Florida and, two decades later, the latest in the field returns there. PoBC, as I’m going to refer to it for obvious reasons, follows four women members of the Sheriff’s Department there, both at home and on duty, as they take down the bad guys and deal with the public.

The four present a cross-section, covering three races and a broad range of ages, from 25-year old Deputy Shelunda Cooper, to Detective Julie Bower – almost double Cooper’s age, whose hair appears firmly rooted in the 1980’s. Each episode is a semi-random selection of incidents. If there’s a theme, it’s in the type of crimes with which each deals. Bower is a member of the sex-crimes unit, which covers everything from rape cases to staging prostitution stings [one of which involved her dressing up as a street hooker]. All the cases of Detective Ana Murillo seems to involve drugs, while Cooper is the queen of the “domestic” – if there’s a family squabble, she’ll be there. Detective Andrea Penoyer’s caseload has a little more variety, though she achieved a certain notoriety for her gung-ho quote, “There’s always a good time to use a Taser,” featured prominently in the trailer (below).

Murillo seems to have a little bit of an attitude, shall we say, especially if any of the members of the public with whom she comes into contact do not adopt the appropriate reverential approach – such as the woman who has the temerity to talk on her cellphone. Murillo basically confiscates the phone, and there are numerous other incidents in the show which have a questionable nature as far as constitutional rights go. Her approach to law-enforcement appears to have more in common with Judge Dredd than “To protect and serve,” though one wonders whether TLC’s description of it as a docudrama – emphasis added – has more significance than might immediately be obvious.

“I’m no different fron the guys, I still kick ass and take names – I just do it with nail-polish and lip-gloss.”
— Ana Murillo

Despite Murillo’s unquestioned position as Empress of Lip-gloss, it’s blonde, blue-eyed Penoyer who is the glamour queen of the show – though the illusion is somewhat damaged when she starts yelling commands at suspects in a voice that’s probably the audio equivalent of getting Tazered. Though as she points out, such an attitude is necessary: “When someone walks in a room and you got a cop who is 6’5″ and 300 pounds, he looks intimidating. So we have to act intimidating: we have to be very, very serious and let people know we’re not playing around.” Well, not all the time, anyway. We also get to see Penoyer and her policewomen friends shopping for guns, and relaxing on the beach. In their bikinis.

This illustrates the strange double-standard at the heart of the show: on the one hand, it wants to show that the subjects are “just like the guys”. On the other, it keeps reminding us that three of the women are mothers – two of them single moms – and takes great care to point out how much they care about their kids. That’s the dichotomy that’s at the core of girls with guns: the contrast between the maternal and life-giving aspects and the death-dealer. I suspect, however, that it would be giving the creators of the show more credit than they deserve if I were to say they were conscious of such philosophical concepts.

Oddly, it’s Cooper of whom we grew fondest, even though she seemed condemned to the pettiest of crimes – someone refusing to pay a taxi fare for instance. Yet she seemed the one most genuinely concerned with her role as a member of the community, not just as a law enforcer. In one scene, she was called to an elderly gentleman’s apartment and ended up calling his girlfriend on his behalf; in another, she gave a homeless person the sandwich her husband had bought for her dinner. When she got a ‘proper’ crime – a burglary – and was able to take fingerprints, she was so genuinely delighted, we couldn’t help but cheer – hopefully, she’ll eventually achieve her ambition of getting into the CSI side of things.

I do have some serious qualms about the philosophy of policing shown here. While there’s no denying the awful effects of drug addiction [some of those arrested are a stark, poignant reminder of that], the efforts here seem almost entirely directed at street-level pushers – who, curiously, all seem to be black. What are the odds of that? Busting them is a pointless endeavour, since it simply creates a temporary gap in the marketplace, into which someone else will stop. Even more dubious are the prostitution stings: disturbing amounts of police resources are devoted to something which is basically a massive waste of time. Want to control prostitution? Legalize it, license it and tax it.

Once again, however, the creators have little no interest in addressing such things. This is about the telegenic end of policing, where no bad guy gets away and questions about rights and the ethics of entrapment operations are not considered. It’s entertainment, pure and simple – and even as people who have a very low tolerance for “reality entertainment” [since we usually find it neither realistic nor entertaining], this is curiously habit-forming.

Shown: TLC, Thursdays, 9pm
Star: Ana Murillo, Shelunda Cooper, Julie Bower, Andrea Penoyer

My Wife is Gangster 3

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★★★
“I guess The Daughter of a Business Associate is Gangster wouldn’t be quite as commercial.”

Despite being directed by the same man as part one, this is only tangentially-connected to the first two films. The most obvious difference is no Shin Eun Kyung, who was the glue that held those movies together. Instead, as noted above, there is no wife at all: Shu Qi stars instead, as Lim Aryong, a mobster’s daughter forced to flee Hong Kong after her apparent involvement in murdering the leader of a rival gang. She goes to Korea and is put under the protection of Ki-Chul (Lee), a fairly crap mobster whose sole qualification for the job is a few words of Chinese. However, his star begins to rise and he develops a tough-guy rep: it’s really Lim who is responsible, but the local criminals would rather credit Ki-Chul than admit they got their asses kicked by a girl. Eventually, her hiding-place becomes known, and a team of vengeful assassins is dispatched to Korea to take care of Lim.

Similarlu to the previous entries, it’s a somewhat sporadic mix, with the humour generally working better than the action. There’s too much obvious doubling of the heroine in the latter, though for the former Lee’s expressive eyes are a nice contrast for Qi’s deadpan cool. Possibly beating both is Hyeon, as the translator hired to interpret: she starts of by saying what Ki-Chul wants to hear, before realizing the potential in her new friend, and the interplay among the trio provide most of the film’s high-lights. On the other hand it is undeniably too long, and especially towards the end, begins to drag considerably. The love that blooms between hero and heroine is, frankly, implausible: yet, since the entire concept is fairly flimsy, this doesn’t hurt the overall feel of the movie too badly. While we certainly mourn the loss of Shin, who is missed, much like its predecessors, this has no ambition beyond being light, frothy entertainment, and as such, doesn’t embarrass itself or the series.

Dir: Cho Jin-Gyu
Star: Shu Qi, Lee Bum-Soo, Hyeon Yeong, Oh Ji-Ho

Ninja Cheerleaders

  By

★★
“B-movie rule of thumb: “ninja” in the title in never a good sign…”

Probably half a star should be taken off if you’re not a fan of really bad movies like us, for this is a bad movie. Really. Let me begin with a straight-faced recap of the plot. Courtney, April and Monica are junior college students who are trying to earn the quarter-million bucks necessary for them to go to an Ivy League college. They earn this by go-go dancing at a strip-club, Their plans are thrown into disarray when the owner of the club (Takei), who has been looking after their savings, is kidnapped by the mob. Fortunately, he is also their martial arts sensei, and they just qualified as ninja. Can they rescue him, get their cash back and make it to the All-City Strip-Off?

Yes it’s every bit as silly as it sounds, and unfortunately not as entertaining. Nor even as potentially full of flesh, since they’re go-go dancers, not strippers they keep their clothes on – which seems odd since it’s not as if Cannatella is exactly a shrinking violet. [Link NFSW, if you hadn’t guessed] How exactly they are supposed to have raised 250 grand in six months doing that is unclear. In a lame attempt to compensate, Presley splices in occasional footage of nekkid boobies, presumably to avoid the PG-rating this would otherwise deserve.

There’s definitely scope for humor in the goofy concept – students by day, ninjas by night, or something like that. However, the movie rarely succeeds in mining any of the potential. Occasionally, Takei appears to realize how ridiculous it all is, and I did laugh at one scene where the girls are questioned by a cop, and feign innocence with the kind of stupidity familiar to anyone who has raised teenagers. Otherwise, however, it’s mostly guilty either of trying too hard or not trying hard enough. Natasha Chang playing the evil henchwoman Kinji is probably the most memorable character, with an odd quirk of referring to herself in the third person. This alone, probably gives her as much personality as the heroic trio; they’re otherwise just not very interesting, despite McConnell’s resemblance to Hilary Swank.

The action isn’t exactly breathtaking either, with the ninja costumes used to conceal body-doubling [save in Takei’s case, where it’s pretty damn obvious]. As a result, it’s never exactly convincing; while there are a couple of fights where the girls have to take on various low-level Mafia people, it’s only at the end, when they face Kinji, that things are interesting. And it’s kinda odd to have the bad girl outnumbered three-to-one by the heroines, which just doesn’t seem fair. Overall, it just about scrapes by if you find it as a freebie on cable. Spending any more than ninety minutes of your time on this is probably not recommended.

Dir: David Presley
Star: Trishelle Cannatella, Ginny Weirick, Maitland McConnell, George Takei

Police Women of Maricopa County

  By

★★★★
“More Mums with Guns.”

The second series of TLC’s “mommy cops” reality series struck close to home, centered as it was on Phoenix. It didn’t come as much surprise as our local sheriff, Joe Arpaio, is infamous locally as a media whore, who wastes no opportunity for self-promotion, and is a sharply-divisive figure locally, adored and loathed by about equal parts of the population. We wondered how long it would take before Joe slimed his way onto the screen: six minutes into the first episode, we had our answer. Fortunately, this was more of a blip, and our fears of an Arpaio-centered show proved largely unfounded [see the execrable Smile… You’re Under Arrest for how bad this could have been].

The series was an improvement on its predecessor, and not only because of the thrill of seeing local places [though we soon realized the editors played fast and loose with geography, consecutive shots often being miles apart]. The Florida show was actually quite depressing in many ways; seemed like the majority of crimes were a) drug-related, and b) ethnic. Here, there’s a good deal more variety: it seems like the sheriff’s office spent as much time serving warrants to deadbeat dads as anything [this is one of Sheriff Joe’s tactics to pad his crime numbers and make him look good, because those are piss-easy warrants to serve, compared to those involving real criminals. Again, see S…YUA]

As notable as what is shown, is what was not included. The MCSO are notorious for “crime sweeps,” which are much about illegal immigration, a massive hot-button political issue in Arizona, as any other offense. However, these have come in for criticism from civil liberties groups, and there was not a mention of these high-profile activities on the show. The only real coverage of the topic was in chasing down “coyotes”, those who smuggle illegals across the border. On the other hand, whiny, liberal media outlets such as the Phoenix New Times bleat “Can’t The Tourism Board Shut This Show Down?” Actually, I like the New Times in general, and we’re good friends with one of their reporters, but the paper’s politics are a different issue entirely.

But outside of the the “Ooh! Been there!” local interest, I think the characters here were generally a slightly more personable bunch. As before, it centres on four women – again, mostly single moms, which makes me wonder whether the job attracts them, or leads to marital stress. There’s Deputy Amie Duong, who is the “Shelunda” of the series – when you see her arrive, you know a domestic dispute isn’t far behind. There’s Deputy Kelly Bocardo, the token minority representative, whose three brothers (among her 14 siblings, apparently!) also work for the department. And there’s Detective Lindsey Smith, whose accemt appears to drift, chameleon-like, depending on to whom she’s speaking.

Finally, there’s Detective Deborah Moyer (right), who is completely marvellous, and the main reason to watch the show. A 19-year veteran, we’d be entirely happy if the show was 100% about her. While the other women occasionally seem very scripted when they are talking to the camera, that isn’t the case with Moyer: there’s a definite sense that what you see is what you get with her. While her policing style may not be “by the book” – in one episode, she basically arrests a teenage girl for failing to hug her father – her reactions are entirely natural and certainly had us nodding in approval more often than not. She just comes across as being very normal: when she encounters a young perpetrator, she tends to think about her own kids of the same age.

But all the police here are more interested in “justice” rather than the letter of the law. That’s in contrast to the Broward County show, where there was far too much entrapment going on: I don’t think the police should be involved in creating crime. It was also notable that the cops in Arizona seemed to have much more discretion. If you were respectful and polite (the New Times would no doubt say “subservient”), you stood a much better chance of getting off with a warning than if you gave them attitude. I’ll file that away for the next time I encounter law-enforcement here, though one speeding ticket in a decade hardly makes me a habitual offender. Still, if we got to meet Detective Moyer as a result, we might considar a life of crime!

What the show did best of all was make us appreciate that, behind the grandstanding, publicity-seeking nonsense of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, are a number of dedicated, hard-working officers who have a very difficult job to handle. They’re not Robocops, and so are both imperfect and fallible, but law-enforcement personnel are human, just like you and me. Being reminded of this fact is something that is never a bad thing.

Silence of the Lambs

  By

★★★★½
“Clarice had a little lamb – Buffalo Bill kills to dress.”

One of only three films to win the top five Oscars – Best Actor, Actress, Director, Picture and Screenplay [the others being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest] – this is arguably the most critically-acclaimed Girls With Guns film of all time. Foster plays FBI trainee Clarice Starling, sent to interview captive killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), from where blossoms a strange, symbiotic relationship where both parties need each other. Lecter can help the FBI find an active killer, nicknamed Buffalo Bill because he skins his victims, while Starling is prepared to open herself up, psychologically, to Lecter’s unwavering gaze.

The relationship between the two is the engine that drives the picture, and it proves Starling’s strength that she is able to stand up to Lecter, to the extent that he develops a respect for her. That’s an interesting contrast to her colleagues in the agency, such as Jack Crawford (Glenn), with whom Starling has an unending battle to be treated as an equal: her physical lack of size [apparent right from the start, when she is an an elevator and towered over by her fellow trainees] is belied by her smarts and strength of character, which propel her forward when many would give up. It says a lot about Foster’s performance, that it is not entirely overpowered by Hopkins’ one; Lecter is another case of a great British actor portraying evil to perfection [see also, in different ways, Ben Kingsley, Alan Rickman, Ranulph Fiennes and Christopher Lee]. If Buffalo Bill is the ultimate misogynist, despite his desire to be a woman, Lecter is the ultimate boogeyman, punishing, in unspeakable ways, those he deems unworthy.

It’s Lecter that people remember, quote and fear – to the extent that the movie sometimes topples over as the result of his but Starling is the heart of the film, defying convention by being a heroine who has, basically, no romantic side [there seem to me to be vague homoerotic hints, but that may just be the result of subsequent data about Foster]. She doesn’t sleep with anyone: indeed, she doesn’t appear to sleep, with her life outside the FBI Academy barely sketched. Starling is intensely focused on her task, and prepared to go to any lengths to accomplish it. She is pushed beyond her limits in the process, and digs deeper than she ever imagined possible, on a journey into her personal heart of darkness. If occasionally far-fetched [there being no way the FBI would let a trainee gallivant around on a top-level case like this], this is a landmark entry in the genre, with quality performances that have rarely been matched.

Dir: Jonathan Demme
Star: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald

The Angelmakers

  By

★★★
“When the Blue Danube turned red…”

You wouldn’t know it to look at the sleepy Hungarian village of Nagyrév [population: 872], but there was a time between the world wars when this was the murder capital of the world. Between 1914 and 1929, an estimated three hundred people were poisoned to death, using arsenic obtained by boiling down flypaper. The great majority of the murders were committed by local women, who wanted rid of their husbands; the local midwife, Julia Fazekas, was the source of the lethal materials. This was in an era when divorce was all but impossible, and many marriages were arranged; Julia offered a quick and painless (for the wife!) escape from a life of abuse and a loveless relationship. Since she was the closest the village had to a doctor, and her cousin was in charge of filing the death certificates, she and her accomplices got away with their crimes.

All good things must come to an end, however. It’s unclear what triggered police action, but Fazekas knew the game was up, and by the time the police knocked on her door, she’d used her own poison to commit suicide. 26 of her associates, however, were taken to court; eight were sentenced to death, seven to life imprisonment and the remainder to various terms in jail. Eight decades later, Bussink returned to the village, and found some inhabitants still alive, who were around at the time, such as the 93-year old Rosika, in whose pantry one of the murderers hung herself from a nail. Her family then used the nail to hang bacon up.

It’s an not uncommon moment of gallows humour in the film (which puts the death-toll lower, at “only” 140). While Bussink initially met some resistance from the locals, they seem happy here to open up to her; the women, in particular, view past events with phlegmatic resignation. Maybe there’s something about Hungarian ladies; see also Vera Renczi, who murdered 35, including husbands, lovers, and a son early in the twentieth century, and of course, Countess Erzsebet Bathory. However, the film never really does more than scratch the surface, and the running-time is padded unnecessarily by shots of the local countryside, rather than providing more historical background. There’s a pointed, if very clumsy, allusion to modern times, with a local folk-dance club discussing the problems they have with their husbands.

The overall effect is to open the door on a largely-forgotten corner of murderous history, but Bussink doesn’t shine much light into the dark corner. There was word of a movie based on the topic, to star Helen Mirren, which shifted the location from Hungary to Yorkshire, with Anna Friel and John Hurt also involved, and Jon Sommersby Amiel as the director. [Curiously, Friel recently played Countess Bathory in another film] That was first announced in August 2006, but IMDB still shows it as “in development”, so who knows. I suspect the Hollywood fantasy will be nowhere near as bleakly murderous as the reality, somehow.

The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries, Volume II, by Karen Koehler

  By

★★★
“Truly a book of two halves, Brian.”

Coincidentally, a year after the first collection, I find the time to read volume two; this contains two stories rather than two-and-a-fragment, but weighs in at about forty pages or so longer. Same price though, I am pleased to note… The first, Legion, takes our FBI agent and her semi-vampiric colleagues off to the post-flood city of New Orleans where a demonic force has been unleashed, which is capable of transferring its presence from one body to another. Hmmm…sounds not unlike Fallen, perhaps? That aside, I did enjoy this one thoroughly: the pace is good and, if the eventual destination of the entity is not perhaps a surprise (it’s quite close to the pair, shall we say), it makes for some great set-pieces. The best of these involves a church where the possessed victim is resting up, which results in a hellacious battle that’s genuinely exciting. The story elements are tidied up nicely too, leaving this a self-contained and effective tale.

However, despite the second story possessing a great title – The Phantom of the Soap Opera – I was much less engaged by it. The set of a daytime TV drama is plagued by mysterious ‘accidents’ of an occult nature, which leads to the pair re-uniting in order to investigate, triggered by a call from an old friend of Scarletti’s. There is just not enough meat on the bones of this one, though perhaps Koehler wasn’t happy with it either, since there is a lot of back-story added here. Indeed, to such a degree that it burdens the main characters, and its relevance to the main plot is doubtful. I’m also growing rather disillusioned by Blackburn’s relationship to the Jackal, the full vampire who saved her life in volume one; Koehler is treading dangerously close here, to the cliches which eventually sank the Anita Blake series.

Another small peeve was a surprising number of typos in the volume, such as “a traveling bad slung over one shoulder.” Though I’m far from immune to these myself [even if you can only have the ‘u’ in ‘colour’ when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, dammit], and I did smile at one, when Blackburn was served by a “gun-chewing waitress.” I’d be sure to leave her a good tip. Overall, not quite as good as the first compilation, though that’s largely down to the second story – individually, Legion rates a ****, but Phantom only **, getting stuck in a morass of its own making. While that leaves the review ending on a disappointing note, Blackburn remains an engaging heroine, and if Koehler can get back to more action-oriented writing in the next volume (as she showed herself eminently capable of in Legion), I’ll be waiting eagerly.

Lady Gangster

  By

★★★
“An archetypal forties B-movie; a straightforward tale, briskly told.”

Having watched both Transformers and Miami Vice over the past week, it’s nice to see a film that doesn’t hang around: coming in at sixty-two minutes, Lady Gangster has hardly a line of dialogue that does not propel the story forward. Based on the play, Ladies They Talk About (previously a 1933 film starring Barbara Stanwyck), this centers on Dorothy Burton, member of a gang of bank-robbers. She takes the rap for one of their jobs, and goes to jail, but is also the only one who knows where the loot is hidden. Childhood friend Kenneth Phillips (Wilcox), now a renowned broadcaster, tries to help Dorothy get parole, but she has also made an enemy inside the prison, who is just as keen our heroine does not get released, and her former gang colleagues have their own interests, needless to say.

Made in 1942, there really weren’t very many films of that period which features female protagonists in this kind of role, and it deserves credit for that. The first half, in particular, is remarkably watchable today, though the plot does find itself badly-convoluted later on. There’s a lot to get through, and the film gallops on at such a heady pace, it feels almost like a trailer for itself. Made post-Hays Code, that obviously forced the makers to tone things down as far as content goes; despite the head warden’s protests that the jail is “neither a country club nor a concentration camp”, it’s certainly closer to the former. Emerson is great as the heroine – she’d go on to a long television career – and Jackie Gleason (The Honeymooners) also turns up as the gang’s getaway driver. Despite a daring escape from jail, she ends up taking a back-seat to Phillips and his two-fisted heroics at the finale, which is something of a shame, but undoubtedly a result of the era. Certainly remains a decent effort.

Dir: “Florian Roberts” [real name: Robert Florey]
Star: Faye Emerson, Frank Wilcox, Julie Bishop, Roland Drew

Hood Angels

  By

★½
“You’ll be a right Charlie if you bother with this one…”

I think I can safely say that this films fails miserably on just about every level. Now, I am probably not the target audience for this unashamedly ‘urban’ movie, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the works of Pam Grier. This, on the other hand… Three women (Brown, Nurse and Sha – though I’ve my suspicions that one of them might just be a man) are arrested under dubious circumstances, but are bailed out to investigate the murder of one’s brother, a rising rapper. They get employed at his record-label, the questionably-spelled Murda Boi records, to scope out the suspects. Was it his partner in the label? The sleazy CFO? Or the mail-room man?

I can cope with bad acting, if the action makes up for it. I can cope with bad action, given an interesting storyline. I can cope with a pedestrian script, as long as the performances enliven proceedings. when each aspect is more hideously inadequate than the next…I was reduced, for entertainment, to seeing how far I could jab my thumbs into my own eyeballs, without making them pop. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. However, even the 99 cents I paid for this DVD would appear sufficient to have funded most of the production – with probably enough left over to buy acting lessons for the performers most in need of them [including two-thirds of the leading laideez – Brown is tolerable in this regard]

But I think it’s probably the action sequences which are the nadir of this film’s elements, carried out at the pace of a Vicodin-addicted sloth, and with the originality and fluidity of a Republican National Congress. The DVD cover and tagline are particularly wide of the mark, since only one of the trio holds a gun at any point, and that’s just to take it away from a villain. Okay, given the price, I wasn’t exactly expecting…well, anything. However, I haven’t been so underwhelmed by a movie in a very long time. That’s 85 minutes of my life I’ll never have back.

Dir: Paul Wynne
Stars: Kenia Brown, Allison Nurse, Kita Sha, Erica Goings

Domino

  By

★★½
“Domino Toppling”

“This is based on a true story…sort of” is how the pre-credit disclaimer goes. Which does, at least, show far more honesty by Tony Scott than the usual claims in such things – Blair Witch and Wolf Creek shuffle their feet nervously. Unfortunately, my response would have to be, “This is a watchable movie…sort of.” Scott brings his usual, hyper-kinetic style to the table, but I was prepared for that and so didn’t mind it. No, the major problem was the derailment of the film from the potentially fascinating and probably unique character of Domino, into yet another heist movie. So instead of any insight into personality, we get to watch a bunch of gangsters and low-lives, of whom Domino is merely one, double-cross each other. It’s an hour of watching the corpse of Barbaro being beaten, if you get my drift; even Scott has been here before, to better effect, in True Romance.

When it concentrates on our heroine, however, it’s eminently watchable, Knightley demanding attention in a way where her obvious lack of physical bulk becomes almost irrelevant. [I was surprised to see how the real Domino was similarly wispy, as the photo on the right shows.] Her finest moment is probably during sorority hazing at college, where her tormenter viciously criticizes her figure. Domino coolly stares back, pauses and asks, “Have you had a nose job?” Bemused, the girl says “No” – Domino sucker-punches her in the face. Twice. The incident sums up the feisty, take absolutely no shit attitude of the character brilliantly, and bounty-hunting becomes an obvious, logical choice of career.

She gets a job with Ed Moseby (Rourke) and Choco (Ramirez), who track down people who’ve skipped bail for bondsman Claremont Williams III (Delroy Lindo) – Ed and Claremont are based on real people, who worked as technical advisors on the movie, Choco is apparently a fabrication. Together, they become an efficient team, aided by Domino’s skills both with weapons and in street psychology. However, Williams has a plot to steal $10m from a Las Vegas casino, which goes badly wrong, not least because two of his chosen patsies to take the fall, are actually the sons of a mob boss. It all ends in a massive gun-battle at the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, where everyone is after the cash and survival.

The film is filled with distracting stunt casting in the minor roles. This includes Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari, Lucy Liu, Jacqueline Bisset, two guys from Beverly Hills 90210 playing themselves, Macy Gray, Tom Waits and even Jerry Springer, though the episode of his show here is far duller and more earnest than the real thing. Walken is, inevitably, the only one to make much of an impression, playing a reality TV producer who wants to make Domino a star. He’s described as having the attention span of a ferret on crystal meth, probably an adequate metaphor for the film as a whole. It lacks the patience to stay with and develop any of the characters, so sniffs around them for two minutes, before scurrying off to find someone else instead.

I should probably comment on how close the film is to the real story of Domino Harvey: not very. She was the daughter of Laurence Harvey (star of the original The Manchurian Candidate) and his fashion-model wife. She was expelled from multiple schools as a child and is rumoured to have tried her hand at modelling, though the evidence for this is questionable; certainly, the catwalk catfight shown in the film appears to be an outright invention. She was, indeed, a bounty hunter, albeit not for long – maybe a couple of years, around 1994-1995. That’s about where the film and truth part company. In sad, actual fact, Harvey had been fighting with chemical abuse issues for years, and was found dead of a drug overdose in June 2005, while awaiting trial for distributing meth.

It doesn’t seem as if the life of a supermodel turned bounty hunter would be in much need of embellishment. But I guess when you sign Richard Kelly, the writer of Donnie Darko, for your script, you’re not looking for cinema verite. That said, this still seems like a wasted opportunity, relegating Domino, who should have been the focus of the film, into just another sidelight. Hell, even the impressive skill with nunchakus, demonstrated earlier on by Knightley, is largely abandoned. Scott’s earlier Man on Fire was much more successful, as it stuck with Denzel Washington’s character throughout, and a similar approach here would have paid dividends. In fact, the plot there, where a bodyguard hunts relentlessly for a kidnapped little girl, would have acquired an entirely new set of resonances with a woman playing the bodyguard. Memo to Scott: if you’re going to base a film on someone’s life, and still make stuff up for it, please use the opportunity to enhance, rather than distract from, the subject matter.

Dir: Tony Scott
Stars: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Lucy Liu