I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

In his last film "Eyes Wide Shut", Kubrick pointed strait on the problem and so did Kramer with this film. It's called "Conspiracy theories", a magic Word that allows the average man to slip back into his normal brain-washed Life in which football and what have you is important instead of what really is important but so unnerving that you have to Wake up in order to deal with it. In short, it's all about accepting that it is OK that some people are rich and others are poor and try to make the best of it. The remedy is, of course, total material equality - no more rich and poor and everybody having the same of this Earth as it should be - but this film, or any film up to date, does not go that far but films like this film is a good step in the right direction as these directors knew just Before Death when it's no use to lie to yourself any more. Yes, Life begins with justice and i have not lived, nor have you or anyone you ever Heard off. Well, that's not entirely true, because when we were Children some of us lived in a World where there were no rich and poor until we came to school where, of course, we experienced differently and were made to accept it. Some of us still retain some decency and we cannot accept that if we do a job together with our fellow men and we all do as good as we can, that we then should not be paid equally. We cannot see that Those of us who were born with more strength and intelligence than others should go on being privileged forever. No, no we Think of justice and the only ones of us that should have more are those who are handicapped and manage to live a Life that we would never be able to live and, for sure, would never want to live. Well, back to the film, which tells the story of Lee Harvey Oswald, more or less. Not the official story of course but most probably the true story, if you can live with the fact that there are people who Think that it is quite OK that they have a thousand times more than other people and that these rich people are those who have the say so about Everything all over the World as things are now.

In the aftermath of Watergate, a number of conspiracy movies appeared, such as this one, written by the late Adam Kennedy ( based on his novel ). Gene Hackman plays ex-Vietnam veteran 'Roy Tucker', a loser who has wound up in prison. He receives visits from Marvin Tagge ( Richard Widmark ), who claims to represent an organisation designed to assist the wrongly convicted. They offer him freedom, and despite distrusting Tagge he accepts. But he brings along a fellow cell mate by the name of Spiventa ( Mickey Rooney ). Exactly why is hard to see, as Spiventa is an irritating little man who drives Tucker mad with persistent talk of sex, not what you want to hear when you are behind bars.Tagge's benefactors kill Spiventa before Tucker's astonished eyes. Reunited with wife Ellie ( Candice Bergen ), and given a new identity ( strangely, he does not attempt to change his appearance. Shaving off that cheesy moustache would have been a start ), he settles down, but finds there is a catch - Tagge wants Tucker to do no less than assassinate the President of the United States. He refuses, so Tagge has Ellie abducted...I will leave the synopsis here, but I am sure you can guess the rest for yourself. The script has enough plot holes to make you want to read the book ( neat trick that! ). The people Tagge represents are never revealed. The allusions to J.F.K.'s killing are unmistakable. Despite the findings of The Warren Commission, the doubt as to whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone persists to this day.This was Stanley Kramer's first movie in years, and while no turkey, it lacks the grip of say John Frankenheimer's 'The Manchurian Candidate' or Alan J.Pakula's 'The Parallax View'. Being a left-wing conspiracy movie, it tends to skirt around its subject matter instead of getting to grips with it. I prefer right-wing ones myself - they are funnier! 'Domino' has the look and feel of a made-for-T.V. movie, and boasts what must be the easiest prison escape in movie history not to mention an ending copped from the Michael Caine classic 'Get Carter'.What makes it watchable are Gene Hackman and Richard Widmark. The latter, who sadly passed away earlier this year, is superb as the mysterious Tagge, who initially appears to be behind the operation until he too is ruthlessly eliminated, beginning a chain of deaths designed to remove all trace of evidence as one by one the perpetrators of this evil plot fall - just like dominoes. As Tucker, the innocent pawn, Hackman is marvellous. You have to wonder though why he chose to hide out in such an obvious place. In his shoes, I'd have fled to the other side of the world, anywhere to get away from these fanatics. Hackman's love scenes with Bergen slow the plot down, and it is almost a relief when she gets snatched. Presumably the producers thought so too, which explains why it opens with a bizarre prologue setting out the film's entire premise - voiced by British actor Patrick Allen - warning the audience that 'they' are out there, and that 'they' are out to get us. Comedian Les Dawson later spoofed this opening in his B.B.C. show 'The Dawson Watch'.Mickey Rooney had earlier worked with Kramer on 'Its A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'. His 'death' scene here resembles like an outtake from that picture, with the actor looking as though he has been stung by a wasp rather than shot dead.Conspiracy movies used to be only made by the left, but now the right are getting in on the act too. Last year, 'Taking Liberties', an absurd concoction of lies and half-truths about Tony Blair's Government turned out to be Britain's answer to 'Reefer Madness'. At least, 'Domino' had lovely Candice Bergen. The best Chris Atkins' film could offer was Anne Widdecombe!Surprisingly, 'The Domino Principle' was made by Sir Lew Grade, the legendary British television mogul behind 'The Saint', 'Jesus Of Nazareth' and 'The Muppet Show'. He worked with Adam Kennedy again in 1980 on 'Raise The Titanic!', whose failure was so great it sank Grade's ambitions of being the new Louis B.Meyer. Being somewhat open-minded, I would not rule out the possibility of a conspiracy.

First I bought The Butterfly Effect, now The Domino Principle. In both movies the title makes a promise which is not kept in the least. The metaphor signifying that one falling stone brings all the others down has nothing to do with the story. The main character is rather a pawn in a game of chess, with no will of its own and part of an unknown scheme concocted by the player. Unfortunately the viewers do not learn much about the scheme either and everything simmers down to blind anti-government paranoia.The acting is better than the story, and there are a few great helicopter scenes. This is possibly the last time Richard Widmark used his insane Tommy Udo laughter in a movie. Eli Wallach has not enough screen time to be more than reliable. One of the reasons to watch this is Mickey Rooney. His performance is a sheer delight. He plays Gene Hackman's sidekick in prison and steals every scene he's in. What a great character actor this former child star became! For the opening credits of this movie they seem to have used several childhood photos of Gene Hackman, apart from a number of dominoes.

Bad wigs and occasionally hokey dialogue aside, there's a reason why several reviewers found the plot confusing. As originally scripted and filmed, the movie was almost three hours long. Kramer was required to edit it down to 97 minutes. Big pieces of the plot were left on the cutting-room floor.This is, unfortunately, a frequent occurrence. People in positions of power on films become enamored of every word and fight against making any cuts to the script. It may be one of the producers, writers or stars; it varies from picture to picture. Whoever it is, they have the juice to get their way, so it all gets shot. When distributors subsequently refuse to accept an overly long film, scenes must be deleted. Had they been deleted earlier, during the writing process, the missing bits could have been covered in existing dialog, or plot points could have been reconceived in order to be shortened. Once the film is in the can, it's too late. Dropped scenes mean dropped connections between what came before and what comes after.The result is a mess like this one. Who knows whether we would have liked it better had we seen the original cut? The wig would still be as bad and there would probably be more hokey lines of dialogue. But the story would have made more sense -- at least to the extent that conspiracy stories ever make sense.