![]() We’re not given enough to feel any sympathy for Ezra - he does leave a cop for dead after all - but the suggestion of additional layers is almost an intriguing tease. Ezra (Ebouaney) is a Libyan immigrant whose own interests see him wanting to make Al Din pay for a past transgression, but Agent Joe Martin (Pearce) is content using him as just another pawn in America’s war on terror. ![]() ![]() While the film’s terrorists are given no depth beyond “infidels must die” the man caught in the middle is afforded just a sliver. The sequence is both brutal and a little silly, but when it ends in immolation her handlers are shown cheering and praising god before moving on to their next target. It was filmed before a real-world shooter did the same in Christchurch, New Zealand - notably a white supremacist asshole who killed Muslims at prayer - but its effect is magnified by reality. We watch via a split-screen as her weapon is mounted with two iPhone’s broadcasting both her face and the victims at the wrong end of her gun. It’s a movie premiere speaking the language of a world obsessed with celebrity, fame, and video entertainment. These mini “movies” are as great a weapon for ISIS as their guns and suicide vests, and De Palma smashes the idea even further by giving viewers an attack from the terrorist’s point of view as she brutally guns down oblivious patrons on a film festival’s red carpet. As Al Din says at one point, while there’s terror in the actual attack itself, the true power comes with scaring and scarring the millions that will watch their videos of beheadings, shootings, bombings, and more. It’s occasionally spiced up with the director’s familiar moves - split diopter shots, slow zooms, a wide-eyed approach to violence - but they’re in service of what amounts to nothing much at all.ĭomino‘s central observation is in regards to the mashup between modern Islamic terrorists and the medium of the moving image. ![]() De Palma and screenwriter Petter Skavlan reportedly crafted a longer, more detailed tale, but what’s hitting the screen is a skeleton at best. Domino‘s production issues are a concern for another time as the focus here is the film as it exists upon release, and while we’ll probably never know what could have been we can’t help but be disappointed with what is.Īt a mere 89 minutes, the film never has the time to explore its characters, side plots, or main narrative with anything resembling completion, and we’re instead treated to setups and resolutions without much connective tissue in between. There’s the slightest tease of an interesting thesis buried throughout De Palma’s clusterfuck of a terrorism thriller, but time isn’t on its side either, and through an unfortunate combination of script and production woes it’s lost amid jumbled scenes, nonsense narratives, and unabashedly confrontational intentions. All of them, in their own ways, are racing to stop terror attacks being planned by the menacing Salah Al Din ( Mohammed Azaay), but time isn’t on their side. Christian digs into the case alongside another detective ( Carice van Houten), but they quickly find their efforts at odds with their superiors and the CIA agent ( Guy Pearce) pulling strings behind the scenes. They find an arsenal and a man who’s been tortured to death, but the bloodied suspect ( Eriq Ebouaney) they catch at the scene leaves Lars on the brink of death before being abducted by men in suits. It’s not the only thing that feels half-hearted about Domino.Ĭhristian ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Lars ( Søren Malling) are Copenhagen detectives who respond one night to a domestic disturbance only to find something far more disturbing than a squabbling couple. Brian De Palma’s latest eschews that newfound accountability and instead takes a serious but sloppy swipe at radical Islamists in an attempt at a commentary it never achieves. Films about modern-day terrorism - serious dramatic thrillers ( Hotel Mumbai, 2019 Traitor, 2008) as opposed to purely jingoistic entertainment ( Olympus Has Fallen, 2013 White House Down, 2013) - have shifted in recent years to either move beyond Muslim extremists or to approach the characters on both “sides” as humans with their own stories to tell.
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