DOMINO: A Compromised Yet Sporadically Engrossing Crime Thriller

It’s not often that Brian De Palma makes a film these days, and it’s been a while since he’s made a truly great one (2002’s Femme Fatale, for my money). An auteur whose heyday ran from the 1970s through the 1980s, with films like Carrie, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out, De Palma’s work was oft-described as a pastiche of his greatest influence, Alfred Hitchc*ck, before they evolved into a style of their own – essentially becoming their own genre. For De Palma, it was not a matter of style over substance; the style was the substance.

Seven years have passed since De Palma’s previous film, 2012’s Eurotrash thriller Passion, was shellacked by critics and fans alike but he’s finally back with Domino, albeit not how he intended. The result of a troubled production, Domino is a very troubled film, suffering from a string of shoddy, half-baked ideas and lacking the editorial verve the director’s films tend to offer. Tales of behind-the-scenes woes reveal deeper issues, involving financiers backing out of the project and delayed release dates. Domino is now finally seeing the light of day, but its final edit is heavily compromised.

Yet, there’s still plenty to admire about Domino. It’s not quite a knock out of the park, and it certainly won’t convert any De Palma naysayers, but it does hit the occasional groove that’s so prevalent in his strongest features. Though fatally flawed in its narrative and structure, Domino offers fleeting glimpses of greatness that De Palma had so hoped to achieve.

Searching for Relevancy in a Modern World

While investigating the possible location of an ISIS terrorist hideout, Danish cops Christian (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Lars (Søren Malling) set out to make a routine arrest of a suspected individual. Upon arrival, they encounter Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney), a soldier who has already slain their target. A brief altercation (which includes an explicit homage to the opening of Hitchc*ck’s Vertigo) leaves Lars with his throat slit and Ezra apprehended by the FBI, headed up by agent Joe Martin (Guy Pearce, sporting a bizarre and exceedingly hammy Southern drawl).

With his partner murdered, Christian sets out to hunt down Ezra, soon accompanied by fellow officer Alex (Carice van Houten, also of Game of Thrones fame), who shared a personal connection with Lars. Unbeknown to them, Ezra is a pawn whose family is currently being held hostage by Salah Al-Din (Mohammed Azaay), the head of an ISIS cell forcing Ezra to do his bidding. Al-Din has a plot to broadcast his terrorist attacks in an effort to go viral, utilizing state-of-the-art filmmaking techniques to spread his nefarious messages. Christian, Alex, and the FBI all become embroiled in this plot, and must stop the madman before he can carry out his truly diabolical mission.

The screenplay, credited to Petter Skavlan (Kon-Tiki), immediately introduces us to Christian and Lars, who share an amiable, Odd Couple-esque relationship together, before their world comes crashing down when Christian makes a rookie mistake of leaving behind his service weapon at home while performing a routine bust. Skavlan’s screenplay expands outward from there, offering a standard-issue, globe-trotting procedural, featuring a tangled web of names and faces. It’s also explicitly political, verging on didactic, one that tackles real-world issues, leaving one curious as to what drew De Palma to this script in the first place.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to properly evaluate Domino in its current state. The film simply feels unfinished from its opening moments, lurching from scene to scene without any sense of structure or connective tissue. At a scant 89 minutes, there are a multitude of details and characters to pack in during this run-time that the film can’t help but feel horribly rushed. To make matters worse, the film is clearly the outcome of post-production issues, with De Palma wrestling over final cut with his shady financiers (judging from the finished product, I’m guessing De Palma lost that battle), resulting in a tonal and narrative mess.

A Return to Formalism

But let’s face it, nobody goes to a De Palma film for the narrative; it’s the filmmaking that offers the real draw, and with Domino, nearly all the director’s stylistic touchstones are on display. Split-diopter shots, baroque color-schemes, vertigo-inducing POV shots, and the split-screen all get their moment time to shine. Scoring duties have been relegated to De Palma regular Pino Donaggio, whose lush strings add proper Hitchc*ckian flavor to the proceedings as well. For all the struggles he went through to get this film made, De Palma is clearly a kid in a candy store as far as his usual aesthetics go.

Performances are surprisingly solid. Pearce is clearly relishing his part as the crooked FBI agent, making a meal out of the scenery. Coster-Waldau is sturdy, hinting at a career of capable leading men now that he’s been freed from his sword-and-dragon obligations. Van Houten fares even better, doing a lot with a little and handily nailing the film’s lone emotional beat. Ebouaney cuts an imposing figure as the soldier-turned-terrorist, but his role is largely one-dimensional, with the script failing to generate the pathos to sympathize with his predicament.

For all its flaws, the film does feature a corker of a climax, and it’s here where De Palma comes alive. All roads eventually converge to a bull-fighting arena, where Christian and Alex must thwart Al-Din’s ISIS cell from detonating a suicide bomb and capture the ensuing footage of the massacre with a drone cam. Much like the title of the film suggests, De Palma expertly sets up the pieces before knocking them over, demonstrating a keen awareness of geographical locations and precise editing, all while Donaggio’s score goes full Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ on the soundtrack. This sequence is electrifying and serves as a painful reminder of the greatness that could’ve been.

Domino: Conclusion

Domino is a difficult film to recommend to anyone who isn’t already a fan of De Palma. The screenplay lacks much in the way of depth or imagination, and budgetary issues become more readily apparent as the film progresses (the minimal visual effects are quite poor). But the film is not completely without its merits, offering flashes of the old filmmaker’s skills through all the narrative jumble. Perhaps, one day, a director’s cut will be released, and we’ll get the true version of De Palma’s vision as intended.

What do you think? Is Domino a return to form for De Palma?

Domino will be released in limited theatres in the U.S. and on VOD on May 31, 2019.