elshikh4
Although it seems complicated, but it's very simple.It's a try where Franz Kafka's The Trail meets the dark world of the intelligence's conspiracies. Actually after a decade of assassinations, such as John F. Kennedy, and his brother Robert, then a decade of political scandals, such as Watergate and Vietnam, the American people had lost their faith in their government, and the real question was : Who's really in charge ?! This kind of questions you may find, more specific and less confused, in the next decades, especially in the 1990s, in tortured torturing movies like (J.F.K – 1992), or in comic ones like (Men In Black – 1995), or in sci-fi TV shows like (The X Files – 1993 : 2002). But nothing could deny that the "conspiracy theory" became assured more than ever. Even a movie, a plain thriller one, with the same concept, and the same title, was produced in (1997).I think that the early dealings were mostly vaguer, more general, and less bold. Look at following movies like (Clear and Present Danger - 1994), or (Absolute Power - 1997) to grasp what I mean. Yet in (The Domino Principle - 1977) they tried smartly to present 2 dimensions : the profound one about a human being who found himself in that tyrannical world against his will, where he would live a devastating fate that he didn't deserve. (Hackman) as (Roy Tucker) portrays that type of a man who suffers of unseen mighty despot and, this time, ready to face it with his human deficient power as "I don't know how to surrender". Then, the outward dimension that carried these meanings, which is the attractive plot about an obscure organization that rules and pushes our hero to a hell of political assassination, to kill someone, for some ones, for some things, he didn't quite understand !It was somehow a great formula : the action thriller time, the wild satire about shadow governments, and the philosophical dilemma of one human being who's forced not to be himself, and wants to challenge what surpasses him to make his destiny. But unfortunately the movie couldn't pull it off brilliantly till the end. Because while it was running masterfully harmonizing, suddenly the last 10 minutes ruined everything.There was that foolish sequence when you see matters and wouldn't be able, for a second, to explain or connect any of them. I don't think, by any chance, that this was the film's main goal, or any film's goal. Once your passivity is finished, the whole thing is finished too. As you'd find yourself so busy of asking so many questions. For example : Who killed (Richard Widmark)? and why?, and originally why they didn't kill (Hackman) instead? or before?, why they - the ultimate incomprehensible they - killed the wife while they could gain more by killing (Hackman) himself?, and how to let him alive that long to kill (Edward Albert) and (Mickey Rooney)?, if (Rooney) was alive, so why the big fuss from the start?, and if (Hackman) planned not to kill the target man, what exactly he intended to do, putting in mind that they were having his wife? Moreover, if (Eli Wallach) was that known to the target man; weaving to him like an old friend, or basically flying over his villa peacefully, why he did it in that obvious way which assured his personality as a killer?, ..etc. So the movie was showing us the domino principle, and suffering from it in the same time too !When you ask all of these questions, successively in short time, to have no answer at all, convincing or not, in the same time that the movie's drama goes mad—first of all, you wouldn't pay attention to any further event. Secondly, you wouldn't care to think more. Thirdly, you would hate any kind of drama was presented till this very disappointing moment. Well, that's too subversive to say the least ! Certainly it had a lot of good elements. But as a whole it destroyed its own strong logic as well as wonderful balance where the symbolic line was running cleverly. It worked for the entire movie till the last 10 minutes when what's philosophical took over and executed the dramatic logic among all the murdered people in the end. Just sense the irony between a semi-documentary intro before the opening credits, then an ending that abstracted the whole thing ridiculously between one poor human and one dominating force that owns the world and about to terminate the fate of our good hero easily !! That's a perfect murder to a very promising try of making a balanced metaphysical thriller which could have remade the story of (Lee Harvey Oswald) from a special point of view, and created a stubborn cowboy out of Kafka's inevitably doomed (Mr. K). Though what a rare, interesting, and kind of amusing that "try" was.P.S : I know that a lot of viewers are confused more about the matter of (Bergen)'s wig ! But I suppose that it was a successful move to make her in (Hackman)'s age, more grieved, and less being the lighthearted very-well-known (Candice Bergen), and as much as I hated it; it worked.
bkoganbing
Gene Hackman gets himself busted out of prison by a nameless government agency who want him for an assassination. It's a given of course that Hackman has the proficient skills for the job.Nobody tells him anything though, he's given as the audience is given bits and pieces of information. That's supposed to be suspenseful, instead it's annoying and boring. Hackman goes through with the mission, but the getaway is messed up and the guy at the top of this mysterious entity orders everybody dead to cover it up. So everyone in the cast dies and at the end you don't really care.One of the other reviewers pointed out that the film was originally twice as long, almost three hours and got chopped down quite a bit. Maybe something really was lost in the translation, but I tend to think it was a mercy act on the audience.A very talented cast that had people like Richard Widmark, Candice Bergen, Mickey Rooney, Eli Wallach, and Edward Albert is so thoroughly wasted here it's a crime. And we never do find out just what federal agency was doing all this, the FBI, the CIA, the DEA or even the IRS.
Marco Trevisiol
There are really two sections of this film. Firstly there's the laughable prologue to the film which is so hysterical and cornball that it would almost feel appropriate that the 'The Simpsons' Troy McClure should be doing the narration.Then the rest of the film begins (starting off with a title song which really doesn't fit in with the rest of the film) which, while technically OK, is killed by a vague, inconsistent and unconvincing plot and not just uninteresting characters, but characters that make no sense.This is especially so with Mickey Rooney's Spiventa, who was supposedly in on the plot and part of the 'organisation' the whole time yet what would have happened had Hackman made the seemingly arbitrary decision to take him along when breaking out? In that case he would've been a totally superfluous and unnecessary character, which in the end he still is.The overall problem of the film is that it's totally unwilling to put any detail on who or what is behind this conspiracy. It's as if the filmmakers didn't have the courage to imply that a particular section of society would be capable of creating such an organisation and instead settled on the hope that a lack of explanation would suffice and the audience would form their own conclusions.Put simply, the film fails on all levels.
