The last thing I expect from Brian De Palma, our Hitchcockian imitator who has shown a flair for more adult themes than the late Hitch, is a fair movie. Fair? Yes, just fair, just okay thriller dynamics from a director who has a flair for overhead shots and dynamic dolly shots in long takes that seem to run on forever. His newest film is a decent thriller called "Domino" with a mixed bag of tricks and only a few notable scenes for what is seemingly a rushed product rather than a full-fledged genuine thriller.
Just watching the opening scenes gave me the nagging feeling that someone else's hands had touched De Palma's project (and, according to the director, nothing is further from the truth). A Danish cop named Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has a cop partner named Lars (Soren Malling), who appears to be an unhappily married man. We sense that immediately as early scenes show Christian having dinner with the married couple, and later Lars is sitting in the dark contemplating his life as he ignores his wife who calls him. These scenes are edited so hastily that it was hard to get involved in them. Cut to Christian with a date and a wild night as he is ready to go back on the streets, and he leaves behind his gun! When the cop duo are out investigating a domestic dispute involving a Lybian with blood-stained shoes, Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney from De Palma's "Femme Fatale"), chaos ensues as Ezra slits Lars' throat and Christian is hanging from the rafters of an apartment, you know "Vertigo"-style.
Christian is taken off the Lars murder case for the unethical sin of abandoning his gun (say what?) that led to Lars' death (okay, I get it), and partners up with Alex (Carice van Houten), herself a former lover of Lars. Christian and Alex go to Brussels and then southern Spain to find Ezra and there is more up the sleeve than we realize when we are introduced to a smarmy CIA agent (Guy Pearce) who is actually looking for a truly dangerous terrorist, Sala Al Din (Mohammed Azaay). No surprise that Al Din has plans to kill as many people as he can at a bullfighting ring in Spain. Ezra wants Al Din dead, and so do the cops.
The only original angle to this messy, convoluted script is how Al Din has his fanatics set up their suicidal bombing - they are all livestreamed for all to see. This is further set up in the stirring, thrilling finale that shows De Palma's mastery of juxtaposing shots from alternate angles and alternate points-of-view to build suspense - few can do it better when it comes to cross-cutting from one specific location to the other.
Other than that, "Domino" is third-tier De Palma, though it is watchable and occasionally diverting yet the cast, with the exception of Guy Pearce and the powerful presence of Eriq Ebouaney, are a little flat. The screenplay never quite develops its few ideas of ISIS using technology to make their terror accessible, and the character of Alex seems to have been left on the cutting room floor (the truth according to De Palma was that the troubled production was underfinanced and perhaps De Palma had more to shoot). The ending is puzzling as it repeats an earlier ISIS suicide bombing at a film festival - it left me wanting and perplexed. Okay De Palma thriller yet clearly lacking his mojo to distinguish it from the norm.
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