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If you are familiar with Brian De Palma's back catalogue, then his new low budget thriller Domino is a very rewarding watch. If you are not familiar with this director then you may wonder what the fuss is about and think of the film as anachronistic or even a cheesy B-movie.
Like a lot of De Palma's films over the years, Domino has had some pretty polarising reviews, but as a De Palma fan I really liked it. He is a master of the suspense thriller. Here's my thoughts on the movie:
I won't tell you too much about the plot but if you are expecting just a standard run-of the-mill revenge thriller that it is pitched at on the surface, then you may be surprised.
Domino is full of the auteurs own career obsesssions: Voyeurism, Hitchcockian-suspense from helplessness and impotence, provocative & un-apologetically confrontational in its subject-matter and darkly humourous. Clearly lower budget than the likes of some of his blockbuster films yet full of stylistic directorial flourishes: a story told in part by visual grammar, split-diopters, slow ominous zooms, split-screens, set-pieces & hypnotic slow-motion, commentary on film-making and film-within-films & use of technology, Brechtian performances, a mistrust of authority figures (in this case the CIA), and a disconcerting score by De Palma regular Pino Donaggio.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Christian as a flawed, somewhat helpless & clueless hero, (again a typical De Palma trait), and the characters surrounding him are the domino pieces the title refers to, toppling when Christian forgets his gun after a tyrst with an un-named woman, which sets other events in motion. This in itself is a brilliant scene, with a subtle piece of misdirection, the gun hiding in plain sight. There's three other astonishing set-pieces, the rooftop chase (homaging Vertigo and To Catch A Thief), an audacious split-screen scene at a film festival (shown twice, but note how the second viewing has been edited/finessed by the terrorist 'director') and the neon drenched bull-fight arena slow motion finale.
Domino isn't on the level of a Carlito's Way, Carrie, Blow-Out, Dressed to Kill or even his more recent criminally underappreciated dreamy thrillers Femme Fatale and Passion, as some of the characters lack depth and are not fully fleshed out in the brief running time, and the film clearly had budgetary issues that De Palma has gone on record about. However, this is still a very interesting & stylish watch for anyone into the pure cinema of De Palma.
Look out also for little clues De Palma gives you of events to come: the position of the figure in the picture on the wall at the opening scene in the café, and the red, blade like sails of the windmill.
P.S. - look out for blood red tomatoes as a bizarre running motif throughout this movie!
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Top reviews from other countries
Sir Nose D'Void of Funk
Full of De Palma's directorial panache
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2019Verified Purchase
Mike Moors
Cheap budget standard thriller
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 August 2019Verified Purchase
Dogs Wonga
Not very good....!!
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Amazon Customer
Don’t buy it.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 September 2019Verified Purchase
antonio vilela da silva
domino
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 December 2019Verified Purchase
