Post by Eddie Love on Dec 8, 2010 10:16:09 GMT -5
Not all cynical, 70s conspiracy thrillers were classics. A forgotten title from this era is THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE a star vehicle cut from the same cloth as pictures like PARRALAX and CONDOR, and while it doesn’t rise to the levels of those thrillers, it’s pretty good and doesn’t deserve the total obscurity it now enjoys.
Okay, maybe one of the reasons the picture isn’t remembered today, or got bad reviews at the time, has to do with the overwrought and hysterical prologue. This includes an absurd “the-story-you-are-about-to-see” voice-over, complete with ominous music and grainy newsreel footage that would seem to have come from some “communist-under-every-bed” civil defense film from the 50s or maybe what you’d see these days on Glen Beck. Then we get a treaclely 70s easy listening ballad that plays over the main credits. When the movie proper begins – we find ourselves in a maximum-security lockdown! If all these swirling and incongruous tones haven’t thrown you completely, then settle back for the actual story.
Our protagonist is Roy Tucker played by Gene Hackman, a brutish inmate with a permanent scowl and a really crummy attitude. He’s in prison for…um…killing his wife’s…first husband? I guess? The details of his underlying crime were a little odd to me and don’t really make sense. Her husband was abusive and Gene steps in and is alleged to have killed him. But wasn’t she then married to Hackman by this time? I didn’t get it and unfortunately, this crime gets revisited in the film’s closing scenes.
Anyway, one day in stir Gene gets the call to meet in the warden’s office with slick and mysterious Richard Widmark who is willing to spring Hackman from the joint. But at what cost? I’ll leave it there, as the details of the plot as they unfold, which are often effectively vague, are pretty surprising – once we get past a rather lengthy dead zone in the middle third of the movie, where Gene’s reunited with his simple-minded wife played by Candice Bergen.
These scenes between Gene and Candy slow the pace and are overly gauzy, but are pretty well played. He really raises her game and she gives a performance that’s impressive, if not exactly always convincing. Widmark by this point in his career was an ace at these types of roles. One of his co-conspirators is the earnest and creepy Edward Albert, who’s also quite good. Maybe the most striking performance is in the role of Hackman’s cellmate played by…Mickey Rooney! And it’s a really foul-mouthed performance; this has to be the only film where you can hear Mickey drop the “f-bomb” and, unless I’m miss-reading this completely, fantasize about jail-raping teenage boys.
THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE is kind of artless and square, but it’s surprisingly gripping as it goes along. While it’s not nearly as good a film as THE PARALAX VIEW for instance, it does have some novel takes on the conspiracy thriller. Chief among these is that the main character played by Hackman is a roughneck thug. He’s not an innocent drawn into a web of intrigue, but the kind of figure you’re actually likely to see involved in these types of nefarious goings-on. He’s not a likeable character, which makes his evolution – perfectly executed by Hackman – that much more interesting. Similarly, unlike the other classic conspiracy films here, we’re inside the belly of the beast, within the cabal itself, not heroically uncovering it. In that sense it’s not unlike James Ellroy’s American Underworld trilogy. I always feel like when a film falls by the wayside for seemingly no reason: there’s a reason. And I can see how the bitter, anti-heroic heart of this movie may have made people very uncomfortable.
The movie isn’t especially well made. The action scenes, such as they are, aren’t executed with much style or energy. But I was surprised by how involving and frankly ballsy this film was.
