Customer Reviews

The Domino Principle [VHS]

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I've long been a Gene Hackman fan, and have been grateful that his career has endured, allowing him to continue landing meaty and interesting roles. The Domino Principle, unfortunately, isn't one of his better movies. Hackman plays Roy Tucker, a convict sent up for murdering his wife's former husband, an abusive drunk. We never learn for certain whether Tucker actually committed the crime--it has happened before the point at which we enter Tucker's story. Until near the end of the movie, he doesn't deny it, and when he does, whether we are meant to believe him remains (intentionally, I think) ambiguous. Tucker is an ex-military sharpshooter, recruited by a perpetually smirking man named Tagge, played by Richard Widmark. They promise to break him out of jail, and they make it clear to him that he will owe them. They don't tell him WHAT he'll owe them, but, desperate to see his wife, he agrees.

Tucker, clearly a bright guy, makes too many stupid mistakes in this movie for us to accept. For instance, as part of the deal, Widmark and his cronies deposit $200,000 for Tucker in a bank somewhere in South America. When they fly Tucker down there to meet his wife, and to wait for further instructions, he goes to the bank, and sure enough, the money's there. Stupidly, though, he leaves it there....He doesn't withdraw it and hide it. He doesn't withdraw it and deposit it into an account to which he is certain only he has access...He leaves it where it is and visits a travel agent to find out about flights to Rio. It doesn't occur to him that Widmark will find out about this, apparently, even though he and his cronies immediately (and inexplicably) knew when, against their orders, he visited his old lawyer (they killed the lawyer, as they told Tucker they would if he contacted him).

In another critical scene, Tucker makes himself vulnerable in a manner that a man who has been through what he has simply would never do.

We never learn who Widmark and his crowd are, or represent. There is a suggestion that they are some secret faction of the government, but the only suggestion of this is that Eli Wallach's character, an ex-Marines General, is somehow connected with this, and Edward Albert's character is a distinctly think-tank kind of guy. The audience knows from the beginning that Hackman is going to have to kill someone (you pick this up from the video box, if not from the movie itself), but we never learn whom, or why. Clearly, the filmmakers are trying to create an atmosphere of mystery and paranoia (like that created so successfully in The Parallax View), but to do so they leave far too much unanswered, and the result is an ultimately unsatisfying movie.

Assassination films have their modern birth with "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), but, in fact, films about assassinations have a long history (e.g., "Hangmen Also Die" in 1943, "All the King's Men" in 1949,). Films like "The Domino Principle" are a sub genre of assassination films that focus on the President or presidential candidates, to which films like "Executive Action" (1973), "The Parallax View" (1974) "Winter Kills" (1979) and "The Package" (1987) belong. What distinguishes these films is often the attention to detail about the assassination and about selecting the person(s) to be the assassin (s).

"The Domino Principle" (1977) by itself isn't that bad a movie, until you look at the list of talent - Gene Hackman, Richard Widmark, Eli Wallach, Mickey Rooney, Edward Albert, and Candice Bergen. I expected more.

Incredibly, the film is produced and directed by Stanley Kramer (1913-2001). Kramer directed 14 different actors in Oscar winning performances, and was nominated 9 times for an Oscar for films like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), "Ship of Fools" (1963), "High Noon" (1952), "The Caine Mutiny" (1954) and my personal Kramer favorite, "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961)."Domino" was his next to the last film, and quite frankly, his best days were behind him. For example, this is a film about an assassination, but the first third of the film is spent in prison. The second half of the film is spent on the escape and subsequent life, and only the final third turns to the actual event.

Then we have the wasted talent. Eli Wallach is rarely on camera. Wallach was nominated 5 times for an Emmy and won once ("The Poppy is also a Flower", 1966). He's made major contributions to film such as "The Magnificent Seven" (he played the bandit chief), "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (he played Tuco, the ugly), and "The Godfather Part III" (Don Altabello).

The great Mickey Rooney is also given little time. Rooney is a veteran of more than 300 films, garnered 6 Oscar nominations and 4 Emmy nominations and one win ("Bill" in 1981).

Clearly something went wrong in the production of this film. Give it a miss. If you like Gene Hackman and assassination plots, "The Package" is a much better film.

This was a movie which tries to be a lot more than it is. It provided formulaic twists and turns, none too subtle allusions to vast conspiracies and ridiculously conceived manipulations of people. The formulaic plot creates more inconsistencies and than anything else and the move leaves many questions purposely unanswered in an attempt to get the audience to think. However, the primary question it raises is how can so many characters lack so much common sense?

This is the type of movie which was created with the intent to get its audience to ponder questions and twist and turns. Who was after whom, and why? However the director failed to realize that some questions must be answered to whet the appetite. This could have been an entertaining movie, and had the potential to do what it originally intended, but it fell flat on its face instead.

I can't imagine a modern movie, no matter how artsy, taking 3/4 of the total length to get into any plot or character development. It was a waste of Hackman's talent and a complete under utilization of Bergen. Save your time and look elsewhere, there are many movies that are far better in this genre.