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— by Joe D'Angelo
Cigar smoke doesn't bother Keira Knightley.
As she stands on her mark in the Stratosphere hotel's Top of the World restaurant, 104 stories above the lights, action and house-favored odds of the Las Vegas strip, odorous plumes of tobacco cloud the set. Still, the menacing-looking casino boss before her fires up stogie after stogie with no regard to contributing to the heady air in the swank surroundings.
"So, you're a ..." he begins, exhaling yet another puff of smoke in her direction, "bounty hunter?"
"Yes" is Knightley's timid, barely audible reply.
It's hard to imagine the slight Knightley, a pretty girl all of 20 with a cherubic face and prominent brown eyes, busting bail jumpers with the same hard-ass approach as A&E's grizzled reality star Dog and so many former professional wrestlers. But in "Domino," which also stars Mena Suvari, Lucy Liu and Macy Gray, it's her job to wrangle bad guys on the run from justice.
"The movie is based on a real person, Domino Harvey, who was the daughter of a famous English actor, Lawrence Harvey, and a model, Paulene Stone," Knightley proudly explains between takes. "And Domino was herself a model when she was 16, then she moved to L.A. and became a bounty hunter."
Suddenly, the casting makes perfect sense.
On the set, director Tony Scott ("Man on Fire," "Enemy of the State"), dressed in his trademark safari vest, cap and shorts, commissions take after take of one of the final scenes. Somehow a few of the restaurant's panoramic windows will soon explode. The repeatedly offending cigar puffer is Dabney Coleman ("Nine to Five," "Inspector Gadget"). In the scene, observed from the restaurant's second-level balcony, Coleman's intimidating character is on the receiving end of $10 million, which he orders his thugs to take off Domino's hands. Standing tall with determination in her eyes, she doesn't sweat the muscle, in part because the relatively green Knightley is able to hold her own against her more experienced co-star — not to mention his fellow Hollywood vets Christopher Walken and Mickey Rourke, who also appear in the film.
When Scott barks, "Great, let's do it again," "OK, people, one more time," or some other pseudo-supportive phrase that translates to "Wrong again!," it's usually not Knightley's fault. The cause was either that the background noise of the Stratosphere's rooftop roller coaster was audible or the lock on the luggage holding the loot wouldn't open or the seasoned Coleman tripped over his lines. Knightley, for her part, is spot-on, her sheepish mannerisms relaying the image of a girl who's perhaps in way over her head.
But perhaps she's not. Here, the young star is far better able to handle herself than in her 2002 breakthrough role as a soccer-playing teen in "Bend It Like Beckham," and the damsel in distress opposite Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." As Domino, Knightley's an opponent even the fearless Captain Jack Sparrow would think twice about messing with.
"For this film, I've learned to use nunchucks and knives, I shoot machine guns, I break people's noses, I ride electric bulls and I'm a catwalk model," Knightley proclaims bravely.
Such dangerous work isn't without its hazards, and as Knightley discusses her role during breaks in filming, two testaments to that fact are clearly visible: a slash below her right eye and another mark just below her collarbone. Only one was the work of the makeup artist.
"You see the little scar there, right?" she asks, pulling aside her hoodie and pointing to her neck. "Machine gun." Her facial expression goes from an understated acceptance to an ear-to-ear grin.
"Shooting two machine guns," she clarifies, "and a shell popped out the back of one and hit me on the neck. It was burning hot, so it gave me a scar. I think it's really cool because people go, 'What did you do?' and I'm like, 'Yeah, well ... machine gun.' "
In actuality, that's about as close as Knightley wants to get to real-life bounty hunting. Unlike Domino, she's perfectly happy to stick with her current profession. And with two more high-profile films on deck, the adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" and two sequels to the "Pirates" franchise, who can blame her?
"I think I'll carry on being an actress until I want to be something else and then I'll try that," Knightley says. "But at the moment, all I want to do is become an actress, which is very boring, but that's the path I'm on."
"Domino" is scheduled to hit theaters on August 19.
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Photo: Daniela Scaramuzza/New Line
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