Monday, April 27, 2020

Domino: There's the De Palma we were looking for



It would be a slight tragedy if Domino turned out to be Brian De Palma's last film. His career has always been weirdly all over the place, and just when you think he's totally lost it, he'll hit you with a movie that is genuinely inspiring, but this particular film would be a disappointing way to finish.

It's got a genuinely incomprehensible script, with risible dialogue, weird plotting that is all over the fucking place and a fair amount of straight-up racism. It gives a bunch of great actors nothing to work with, is visually drab and has a music score that sounds like something from a Charles Band movie from the 1980s.

And yet, just when all hope is lost, it still has one moment that is very De Palma - a large, crazy set piece towards the end, involving a suicide bomber and a drone at a Spanish bullfight, that is ridiculously over the top and baroque and drawn out in all the best ways.

It's there, after more than an hour of almost unwatchable nonsense, that it becomes very watchable nonsense, and there's the De Palma we all know and love. If this is his last film - and with the increasing periods of time between films, it might very well be - at least it's not a total wash-out.

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