Oh my God, I knew that Brian de Palma had gradually sunk into mediocrity during the 2000s, even more so than colleague and friend Francis Ford Coppola, but this movie is rock-bottom, almost Battlefield Earth-style. I also knew that production of this movie was plagued by budget issues and technical problems, but that doesn't excuse a horribly bad screenplay and direction from the man who gave us stylish classics like Dressed to Kill and Scarface.
I can seen past setting the movie in Denmark and letting the largely Danish cast speak English. For the rest: let's grab the movie sin counter:
*Sin counter exploded*
All those 1-star votes may be a bit excessive. The cast, although wasted, makes a good effort with what little they had to work with. I'll forgive one instance of gratuitous nudity because people having sex at night is pretty normal. And de Palma does try to put his usual stamp on some scenes. Every now and then, his sense of cinematic language comes accross. Sometimes it works. But most of the time, it ends up being laughably obsolete.
And to think that de Palma once attended an early screening of Star Wars and said "Nonsense! What is this sh#t?" (granted, this was the infamously bad rough cut that was later saved by an Oscar-winning re-edit and a text crawl re-write by de Palma); I hope George Lucas had the opportunity to return the favor. This movie can be the pun of most bad-movie-discussions for years to come: if someone claims that Spielberg and Lucas really need to apologize for the Star Wars prequels and Indiana Jones 4, simply remind them: "De Palma made Domino". End of discussion. This would make even the late Roger Ebert consider re-assigning his "I Hated Hated Hated This Movie" quote to this film. The 'How Did This Get Made?' podcast hosts have their work cut out for them. And CinemaSins: this one's for free.
I can seen past setting the movie in Denmark and letting the largely Danish cast speak English. For the rest: let's grab the movie sin counter:
- Criminally underdeveloped and unmotivated main characters.
- Horribly one-dimensional baddies with stereotypical ethnicity.
- Poor exposition, causing the need to rewind several times to make sense of characters and names.
- Pedestrian cinematography and editing that wouldn't look out of place in a bad direct-to-video crime drama from the 1990s.
- Pompous and intrusive scoring that would be suitable for a church sermon or a spaghetti western.
- Blatant waste of a good cast.
- Re-using 70s style techniques hoping that they're still cool.
- Sacrificing all logic for the sake of cool action or suspense scenes that end anti-climactically anyway.
- Dialogue like "Was he in pain?" "Well, stab wounds hurt."
- Plot development for the sake of having a twist, without proper motivation or exposition.
- Detectives who stumble through their case á la Inspecter Clouseau with blind luck, not following any promising leads, not asking for outisde help, nor doing proper research.
- Laughable fight scenes that make the A-Team look cool again.
- Terrorists bringing automatic rifles through security at a highly public event post 9/11, and firing at least twice while remaining undetected.
- Female detective partner being visibly shaken but her perceptive male colleague doesn't notice.
- A 3-month pregnancy that doesn't show, is mentioned only once and plays exactly ZERO part in the rest of the story.
- Aimless subplots about history of alcohol abuse and infidelity that go nowhere and have no dramatic pay-off whatsoever.
- Bad guys able to escape in broad daylight, as if cameras are not literally EVERYWHERE or intelligence agencies wouldn't have clues about their whereabouts.
- Portraying the insidious American government agent as a fast-talking jolly guy, despite having the worst interrogation skills ever.
- Tasteless terrorist attack clips that look remarkably like a sleek 1st person shooter and not like the usual low-definition, shaky cam fare.
*Sin counter exploded*
All those 1-star votes may be a bit excessive. The cast, although wasted, makes a good effort with what little they had to work with. I'll forgive one instance of gratuitous nudity because people having sex at night is pretty normal. And de Palma does try to put his usual stamp on some scenes. Every now and then, his sense of cinematic language comes accross. Sometimes it works. But most of the time, it ends up being laughably obsolete.
And to think that de Palma once attended an early screening of Star Wars and said "Nonsense! What is this sh#t?" (granted, this was the infamously bad rough cut that was later saved by an Oscar-winning re-edit and a text crawl re-write by de Palma); I hope George Lucas had the opportunity to return the favor. This movie can be the pun of most bad-movie-discussions for years to come: if someone claims that Spielberg and Lucas really need to apologize for the Star Wars prequels and Indiana Jones 4, simply remind them: "De Palma made Domino". End of discussion. This would make even the late Roger Ebert consider re-assigning his "I Hated Hated Hated This Movie" quote to this film. The 'How Did This Get Made?' podcast hosts have their work cut out for them. And CinemaSins: this one's for free.