Without even thinking of reproaching him for something, De Palma's latest film is lazy. He does not have the spirit or the power that his works knew. It is closer to a telefilm made to cover a space than to the project of a director with enormous trajectory. With a grim scale of 05/05.
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Looking for the reasons we find that the shooting was rugged, with financing problems; and in the words of the director, a frightening experience on the set. The filming started there for the distant 2017, when the dollar did not reach twenty coins and the Argentine team did not lose any competition because that year nothing was played. And after comings and goings, we had it at the beginning of this 2019.
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The story begins with two police officers who receive a call for domestic violence: Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - yes, Jaime Lannister of GOT-) and Lars (Søren Malling). There they meet Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney), an apartment full of explosives and a mutilated man. The persecution begins and Tarzi escapes, but not before offering us one of the innumerable tributes that De Palma has done to Hitchcock since time immemorial. In this sequence the reference to Vertigo (1958) is undeniable; and there it could have ended everything, leaving us with little but dignified flavor. However, the plot advances between ISIS terrorists, Christian and Alex (Carice van Houten - yes, Melisandre in GOT-) seeking revenge, and CIA agents led by one Joe Martin (Guy Pearce).
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There are style marks, there are "Depalmian" moments, but they are accompanied by Petter Skavlan's lazy and bland script, of a political reading that is halfway between criticism and inattention, and a montage that is cut at times with A scissors eaten away. There are plans that seem “well, yes, I put the camera here and it was. Action! ”, And the performances are not necessarily bad, but not remarkable.
There is, perhaps, a satirical intention hardly understandable when presenting ISIS terrorists as filmmakers looking for the best way to "roll" an attack for the world to see. The approaches to these attacks, especially that of women with a machine gun at the Dutch film festival, are victims of the stumbling blocks. Not for nothing the director of Carrie has declared "not my movie".
Then we can make a great leap towards the end, with a sequence in which the viewer looks through the terrorist, through his binoculars like James Stewart in Rear Window (1954). And at times that pure De Palma appears, with slow motion and suspense controlled with the precision of a watchmaker [1], but it is diluted in an ending that oscillates between the absurd and the vain.
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Domino is not the De Palma we want, that of The Untouchables, Carrie, Blow Out or Scarface; But there is the one we know. Because it may seem old and tired, and will have some other producer who does not take the twine, but its imprint is undeniable, and not any director achieves it.
So, the question that can be asked is: do you forgive a loose movie? The answer is: who the hell cares, is Brian De Palma.
So good bye nothing.