Is it possible to get a venereal disease from a movie? This thought bounced through my head as I watched "Domino," the stunningly awful new film from director Tony Scott ("True Romance"). The University Health Center has assured that, in fact, it is not possible to get a sexually transmitted disease from a motion picture, but I have my doubts. The movie has all the hallmarks of VD: dirt, grime and Mickey Rourke, who, it should be noted, is looking more and more like Shrek each day.

The thing about "Domino" is that it's not so much a movie as a movie loaf: it's made up of movie-like parts, but they never fit together into anything coherent. You'll find chunks of different movies throughout. Sometimes it's a cheeky Charlie Kauffman-esque satire; sometimes it's a farce; sometimes it's a wiseass "True Romance"-style action movie. I'm all for shifting tones in a movie in order to keep the viewer from getting complacent, but what goes on in "Domino" is ridiculous. It's a mess, a horrible smorshgaborg of clashing styles and performances.

I have no idea where the blame should start. Usually, with bad movies, you can pinpoint one particular element about what makes it so bad. In "Domino," everything is so awful from top-to-bottom that it's a little intimidating. The movie is kind of like a perfect storm of awfulness: horrible direction, writing and acting all add to create a unique failure that might have gone down as one of the worst in film history if everybody involved hadn't made the wise choice to play everything for camp, probably the only smart decision anybody involved with the movie made.

First, the script sucks. Richard Kelly, the man behind the mind-bender "Donnie Darko" penned the script and if "Donnie Darko" and this film are any indication, he has no idea how to write scripts that follow any set structure. The movie tells the story of Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley), the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey ("The Manchurian Candidate") who rebels against her prep school confines (other than characters created by John Irving, has anybody in the history of movies ever responded well to prep schools?). Soon, she has banded together with a motley crew of bounty hunters (led by Rourke and the always reliable Delroy Lindo) and they do things together. Period. That's it. No character development, no motivation: just things. I was tempted to call these things that they do together adventures, but they really aren't adventures; they're just things that happen. Nothing is exciting enough to really be called an adventure. Sure, things blow up, but, because Kelly hasn't created a single character that is remotely likeable or realistic, nothing matters. He wants his script to be hip and detached, in the style of Tarantino, but instead it's just cold.

Director Tony Scott certainly isn't going to give the movie the soul it needs. A director with a better grasp of human emotions could probably have made an interesting movie out of Domino's life, but Scott isn't interested enough in what drives this little-girl-lost to pursue a life of crime. He just wants to blow stuff up and look cool while doing it. Stuff does get blown up, but it certainly doesn't look cool. Scott is one of those directors who trades in quick cuts and washed-out visuals: when used in a good movie (like they were in 2003's "Man on Fire") they can raise the dramatic stakes and make a movie more involving and realistic. Here though, they are distracting. Everything is tinged with a nauseating green color that makes the movie look like it was the first movie filmed after the Nuclear Apocalypse. Scott is the wrong guy to direct this movie: he brings snarky, come-see-how-good-I-look narcissism where there should be wonderment. Never before has globetrotting seemed this bland. Domino's story, in Scott's hands, is just another murky action movie.

Keira Knightley is a good actress, but here she is forced to play a cartoon. She does it well enough I suppose, but she never seems invested in her part. She always seems to be holding back from the audience, like she doesn't want to expose herself fully in a movie like this. The supporting cast, which includes Christopher Walken, Dabney Coleman and Jacqueline Bisset (she looks good, by the way), all do pale retreads of past performances. Most disappointing is Walken, who sleepwalks through another role, much like he did last summer in "Wedding Crashers" (can you think of one thing he added to that movie? One? I'm waiting….). If Christopher Walken can't rescue a movie from the doldrums, what hope does that leave humanity?

Grade: D