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DOMINO (2019)
Director: Brian De Palma Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Carice van Houten, Eriq Ebouaney, Guy Pierce, Mohammed Azaay, Søren Malling, Paprika Steen, Thomas W. Gabrielsson MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:29 Release Date: 5/31/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 30, 2019 The main takeaway of Domino is that Brian De Palma still has it. That "it" is the ability to craft suspenseful sequences out of very little or to find a way to ground scenarios that are almost absurd by way of a focus on procedure. Two such scenes stand out here: 1.) the hero's introduction to the story's central menace, which starts with a fight and ends with a chase hanging from a roof, and 2.) the movie's climax, set at and around a bullfight, which plays out entirely in slow-motion. The rest of this thriller, involving a terrorist plot and a trio of characters seeking revenge, touches upon some intriguing ideas—about vengeance, the ways in which mass media make the goals of terrorism easier to achieve, and governments' almost apathetic approach to terrorist threats as a kind of game. Petter Skavlan's screenplay suggests these concepts, but it never finds a way to go any deeper than the mere thought. The plot has Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a Copenhagen cop, discovering explosives and a dead body in an apartment. His partner Lars (Søren Malling) is critically wounded by Ezra (Eriq Ebouaney), the man responsible the dead guy. While Ezra is manipulated by CIA handler Joe (Guy Pearce), Christian teams up with Alex (Carice van Houten) to hunt the man who attacked his partner, uncovering a terrorist cell in the process. Most of the storytelling intrigue comes from the murky morality on display: Ezra is a vigilante, looking to avenge his father's murder (posted online by terrorists), and the apparent heroes are really no better in terms of motives. A good part of that conflicted sense of right and wrong, though, is undermined by the obvious inhumanity of the story's villain, who orchestrates mass murder for a wide audience. Does it really matter if the protagonists are flawed (The two police heroes—one breaking the rules and the other having an affair—aren't even that flawed by comparison) when they're trying to stop someone this evil? Ultimately, there isn't really a point to all of this, beyond the wider chase and the specific sequences (One, a massacre that's shown in gruesome detail, feels too exploitative for any message to be made). Through pure skill, De Palma almost makes us forget the shallow plotting, characters, and thematic intentions of Domino, but almost isn't enough. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
strong violence, some language and brief nudity)
