In Tony Scott’s Domino (2005), Mena Suvari plays an entertainment executive who describes her boss’s (Christopher Walken) attention span as being one of “a ferret on crystal meth.” Ironically, this throwaway line of dialogue effectively describes the editing style of its director. Commonly employing two editors on each of his films, Tony Scott’s films are essentially case studies of an ongoing series I would like to title “When MTV Editing Goes Wrong.” Keep in mind that I am not criticizing film style or shorter shot lengths here. Rather, I am criticizing film style when it is used as a crutch to overcompensate for the deficiencies of a film. The depressing realization I came to while watching the opening of his debut film The Hunger (1983) was that, for a brief moment, Tony Scott actually knew how to use editing for engaging purposes rather than visceral ones.
