Domino
Brian De Palma seems to be a long way from his best. The Scarface and Mission: Impossible director has only worked on a handful of films over the last two decades and it seems to have been a steady decline in ambition and quality over that period, with Domino doing nothing to rectify this.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as Christian, a Danish cop who is navigating an ever-increasing threat from ISIS in 2020. After one cell member slits the throat of his partner, Lars, Christian must find justice for the crime, with the aid of Lars’s girlfriend (Carice van Houten) and a CIA agent (Guy Pearce) who bears some responsibility for the attack.
Fresh from the fan hate of the final season of Game of Thrones, Coster-Waldau does show promise as a leading man – his range as an actor isn’t crystal clear but this isn’t a failed performance either. His reunion with fellow GoT alumnus van Houten is one for the fans also given her last minute replacement of Christina Hendricks.
However, over-scripted and unoriginal, Domino is an action picture we have seen ten times over with uninteresting sequences, a tired plot and an abundance of unnecessary dialogue. Vaguely interesting performances from its cast do little to save this exhausted formula.
The film is based heavily on the most ill-timed and amateurish mistake a cop could make and it just doesn’t work nor does it provide credibility, making the rest of the movie simply the ramifications of a bad joke. The eerie soundtrack is misplaced, as is the unsatisfactory ending. The brutality does the job of installing a shock factor, and is unsurprising given the subject matter is ISIS, but after the original intrigue of this wears off, the audience is left with very little.
De Palma may have a little way to go in restoring his name as a great director in the film industry.
Brady Clark
Domino is released digitally on demand on 5th August 2019.
Watch the trailer for Domino here:
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