The Domino Principle (1977) When an aging director loses his basic filmmaking skills and his ability to intelligently weld his storytelling to the times he's living in, it's never a pretty sight.
The results: painfully out of touch, embarrassing movies that die instant deaths the moment they hit theatres.
Stanley Kramer, the impresario of films that paired big stars with big, controversial issues, enjoyed a much celebrated career with movies like "On The Beach", The Defiant Ones", "Judgement At Nuremberg" and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner".
But as he entered the 1970's, things started to go awry for him. kicking off with "R.P.M.", his abysmal take on the student protest movements sweeping the country. What couldn't have.
"The Domino Principle" based on one of those airport paperback thrillers you'd buy before a two hour flight, found Kramer taking on political assassinations engineered by mysterious, unknown, conspiratorial forces.
Three years before this film's release, this hot button topic had already been superbly handled in Alan Pakula's chilling " The Parallax View", now considered a modern day classic. (See our post of 2/28/17)
Kramer was at best a competent craftsman as a director and his films, for all their important subject matter and powerful performances, never displayed any sense of style, nuance or visual imagination.
With a useless script that gave the actors nothing to work with, Kramer couldn't cover the flaws with any flare of his own, so "The Domino Principle" just lies there like a dead, half eaten whale that; washed up on the beach.
This inert excuse for a thriller finds a convicted murderer and Vietnam vet (Gene Hackman) recruited by a typically shadowy outfit fronted by two business suited executive types. (Richard Widmark, occasionally breaking into his trademark manic giggle and Edward Albert as an arrogant, officious prick, which doesn't sit too well with Hackman)
Hackman's needed to bump off the President and to sweeten the deal for him, he's reunited with his estranged wife. (Candice Bergen, almost unrecognizable in a short, brown wig.)
The film moves along with the urgency and immediacy of a still life oil painting and you can figure out it's Bergen under that dopey wig once she tries acting out an emotional scene that's light years out of her miniscule range.
The plot's a sketchy, worthless collection of worn out tropes, including the part where the puppetmasters of this vast conspiracy start eliminating all the participants. You know the drill.
The usually excellent Hackman knew he'd stumbled into a stinker and wanders through the movie barely engaged by anything going on in it.
We won't belabor this any further or waste any more time on such a throwaway movie. 'Zero stars (0). BQ says skip it. ,
No comments:
Post a Comment