Movie Nation

Some vintage cinema you begin watching with the idea that you’re to see a “classic” featuring an Oscar winner, a famed producer/director and a handful of legends of the big and small screen. And some of those movies remind you that the legal definition of a “classic” car in any state is any vehicle that’s over twenty-five years old.

That’s it. It’s just the age, not the quality, that denotes “classic.”

The passing of screen legend Gene Hackman just before this year’s Academy Awards ceremony added poignancy to that event’s annual “In Memoriam,” and sent a lot of cinephiles out beating the streaming service bushes for titles he starred in that we’d missed.

Hackman made a lot of servicable thrillers and dramas over the decades, and a couple of decent comedies. And, as those of us who check in on “Company Business,” “Split Decisions,” the later “Superman” films, “Lucky Lady,” “The Chamber” or “Welcome to Mooseport” can attest, he took on a lot of work that paid well, but which was never going to come off.

Crusading producer-director Stanley Kramer was the conscience of Hollywood for much of his career, touching on race (“The Defiant Ones,””Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”), American nativism and backwardness of the anti-science variety (“Inherit the Wind”) and the dangers of nuclear war (“On the Beach”).

It’s safe to say that by the time Kramer produced and directed “The Domino Principle,” he’d lost his fastball and maybe his changeup. A deathly dull post-Watergate “Big Conspiracy” thriller about how “they” find and control assassins and manipulate regional and world events through murder, it’s “Winter Kills” without the satiric laughs, “The Conversation” without suspense.

And Hackman, playing Tucker, aVietnam vet/sharpshooter in prison for murder, is at something less than his best in a creaky, corny, old fashioned riff on the paranoia that was rampant in the cinema of the ’70s.

Tucker apparently killed his wife’s ex and is facing 15 more years in prison for it, locked up with a veteran con (Mickey Rooney), trying to “read” his nervous warden (Ken Swofford) when he’s told he must take a “little talk” with this fellow “who might be able to help you.”

Tucker is wary of the suited Tagge (Richard Widmark), who is full of questions about his crime, his service, etc., and not forthcoming with many answers to Tucker’s queries. By the time he’s chatting with Tagge’s subordinate (Edward Albert), Tucker’s a tad testy.

“They,” as his cellmate refers to such men, offer to get Tucker out. What they “want” in return is something he can’t get out of them.

They do get him out, reunite him with his wife (Candice Bergen) and set them up under new identities in Central America. And then “they” come calling again. And this general (Eli Wallach) who works with them is all business.

The film’s most chilling scene comes when Tucker, throwing his leverage weight around one last time, tries to get out of whatever “deal” they have in mind. He’s dropped at a police station, only to have an LTD barrel past him with the muffled screams of his wife, her terrified face staring at him through the rear window as it shoots off into the night.

But “chilling” moments are few and far between, and that signature scene comes over an hour into this 100 minute thriller. From the get-go, Kramer gets it wrong.

The film opens with a creakily old-fashioned news photo/footage montage narrated by a stentorian voice who references Franz Kafka and conspiracies and asks “Who’s BEHIND them?” Kramer is hell-bent on throwing subtlety to the wind for this sermon on how “the world” really works.

“You’re a pair of hands” to wrap around a rifle, Rooney’s Spiventa warns. “They OWN you.”

Everything about the film feels studio system antiquated — from the canned sound effects to the looped dialogue of conversations filmed at a slight distance to theatricality of the performances.

Rooney’s presence parks the picture in an earlier epoch, but the actors alone cannot give it the grit and nervous energy of the great cinema of the ’70s.

The third act action features some pretty serious stunts and explosions, but Kramer dawdled away more than an hour to launch into the thrills, and by that time the viewer’s already called a code on this corpse.

Hackman did action pictures into his ’60s, and almost all of them were better than this. Curiously, he worked with the almost-as-tall-as-him Bergen three times, on “The Hunting Party,” “Bite the Bullet” and this one. Those are among Hackman’s worst reviewed outings.

Even the title of this adaptation of an Adam Kennedy novel seems ill-considered. It’s a clumsy variation of Cold War era “domino theory.”

“The bigger the stink, the more there is to cover up,” Widmark’s Tagge explains, rationalizing assassinations for those who want them to happen. “And the man who worries the most is the man who gave the original order. If he panics, the dominoes start to fall.”

If you want to see Big Conspiracies rendered in broader, more entertaining strokes, watch “Winter Kills.” And if you want to see the late great Gene Hackman in a prime part, pick another movie — almost any other movie — instead of “The Domino Principle,” which is one of his worst.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Richard Widmark, Edward Albert, Eli Wallach and Mickey Rooney.

Credits: Directed by Stanley Kramer, scripted by Adam Kennedy, based on his novel. An AVCO Embassy release on Tubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:40