Tony Scott, never a director to whisper if a megaphone is handy, bellows to the heavens with his latest, "Domino." Trying to let the visuals overwhelm a script that runs out of energy at the half-way point, Scott keeps raising the volume on "Domino" until the cacophony becomes grating and finally numbing.

Based on a script by "Donnie Darko" scribe Richard Kelly (obviously getting his Charlie Kaufman groove on), "Domino" tells the not-quite-true story of Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley). The daughter of "Manchurian Candidate" star Laurence Harvey, Domino progressed from a very brief career in modeling (the film offers less than a minute of that somewhat suspect aspect of her career) before becoming a bounty hunter under the tutelage of Ed Moseby (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez).

Given that the film begins in utter chaos -- a shootout in a trailer park involving a big dog, a severed arm, a bloodied Ian Ziering and a whole lot of shooting -- it's obvious that the story isn't going any place good. How did we get there? Well, it involves (in some way or another), Mo'Nique as a disgruntled DMV worker, Stanley Kamel as a vengeful Vegas mobster, Dabney Coleman as a casino owner, Christopher Walken as a reality television producer for The WB, Jerry Springer as a schlocky talk show host and Lucy Liu as a federal agent of some sort.

While most films that begin with a perplexing event and backtrack to explain how the characters got into their initial predicament, the point of Kelly's twisty script is to obfuscate rather than clarify. The film loops in on, runs circles around and finally devours itself entirely in a web of self-reflexivity, post-modernism, irony and garish style. The story is told through several layers of voiceover and narrative removes, none of which prove to be entirely truthful, which is fine, because "Domino" isn't really a biopic in any traditional sense.

On some level, "Domino" is a satire of the media's obsession with violence, which would make this into Tony Scott's take on "Natural Born Killers," except that Scott already made his own version on the theme with the far superior "True Romance." As presented here, Domino Harvey is a love-lorn, bored rich girl who see bounty hunting as a way of getting in touch with something primal in herself, a way to actually feel. For her, the alternative would be a life as the perfect sorority girl. In turn, the reality producers see Domino specifically and her group of bounty hunters in general as a way to tap into those primal forces at a safe remove. The alternative for The WB might be the canned emotion of teen drama titled "Heartfelt Sap" (the poster hangs in Walken's office).

For its nimble first hour, Kelly's "Domino" script is content to just be about a woman having an identity crisis and trying to recreate herself. Domino is like Paris Hilton if the celebutante decided to trade in Tinkerbell (or her replacement mutt) for gun and Nicole Richie for an appealingly spunky personality. It's very plausible that given our current cult of personality, TV producers and celebrities would flock to somebody like this fictional Domino Harvey (that the real Domino died at home alone, nearly unknown to the general public is another sad irony of the film). Driven more by knowing humor than by action or violence, the first hour of "Domino" is Scott at his most lively, zipping through time and introducing new personalities with such speed that there's no time to ponder, "Why did cinematographer Daniel Mindel think it was important for the entire movie to be shaded chartreuse?"

As if mirroring the film's plot, everything in "Domino" goes wrong when Kelly decides to concentrate on the labyrinthine plot over the characters and their motivations. I imagine that the script makes some sense on the page, but perhaps Scott got confused about what he was doing? Or he wanted to give viewers lots of pretty things to look at while they were being confused? Regardless, the director gives new meanings to the word "overkill." When a filmmaker packs more musical cues into his film than Cameron Crowe, that's a bad sign, but when a filmmaker whose version of "normal" already resembles an acid trip decides that what his film really needs is for everybody to freak out on mescaline, it's just annoying. The film has so many mini-climaxes that Scott knows the audience will be desensitized to any climax short of blowing up a major Las Vegas landmark, so that's what he does. Then he has the nerve to insert an image of the real Domino Harvey and the words "In Loving Memory," as if the film had anything to with her.

Because Kelly and Scott's interpretation of Domino is all about empty attitude and attractive preening, Knightley is a perfect casting choice. Even if she's dramatically slight at times, she has the attitude down. And just in case the character ever gets too strong or loses her femininity, Scott and Kelly throw in a strangely motivated striptease (pay close attention to Knightley's butt double) or a drug-aided sex scene (pay close attention to Knightley's absence of boob double). A better or more forceful actress would have detracted from the pyrotechnics.

The best of the supporting actors are old vets Rourke and Walken. The strangeness that Rourke is at the point in his career where he can play a father figure is offset by just how oddly and lecherously he handles the role -- Ed can't decide if he wants to groom Domino for the big-time and put her clippings on his fridge or if he just wants to bang her. For his part, Walken remains the only working actor capable of ranting about a font change and making that both dramatic and funny. It's a rare movie that couldn't use more Walken.

As the host of The WB's "Bounty Squad," Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering play themselves with the right note of absurdity. I particular like Green's assertion, "I killed a squirrel, once" as his credentials with violence.

Running nearly 130 minutes, "Domino" is abusively long, but still feels gutted in places, though the inevitable extra-long DVD director's cut could be even worse. It's Scott's lack of restraint and Kelly's lack of focus that keep "Domino" from fulfilling its initial potential.