You sit down with a movie like Dominique the way you’d order a late-night plate of bar wings at a dive bar: you know what you’re in for, and all you’re hoping is that it brings enough heat to be worth gnawing on. As action programmers go, this one checks all the boxes out of sheer necessity rather than finesse. We’re basically in the realm of “Die Hard by way of Bogotá,” or maybe, more honestly, as if John Wick lost her passport and was forced to improvise with whatever household hardware happened to be lying around—a Ukrainian takeout menu, heavy on grit, low on budget, zestily unconcerned with nutrition.
Oksana Orlan (she could teach a plow horse a thing or two about durability) plays the titular Dominique—a cold-blooded killing machine who, maybe by accident, also occasionally resembles a human being. Forget moral ambiguity; she’s glazed in it, but mostly glazed. When her cartel plane is shot down and she’s forced to enact bloody revenge before even bathing in the nearest river, we know exactly what we’re in for: a single-location siege film, outnumbered and outgunned, with more contrivances than an entire season of Narcos.
The director, who clearly knows he isn’t making Heat (or even, heaven help us, Colombiana), makes the most of his limited palette—one rickety house, one chirpy extended family, and a police force whose size would make the NYPD blush, all lined up to be mowed down like extras in a spaghetti Western with their mustaches still attached. The economy here is creative, bordering on desperate. Every room, every hallway, every conveniently bulletproof bit of décor comes into play; even the family’s grandfather, wheeled about like a prop in a school play, gets his one shining chance to deliver a little lead justice.
Now, I should say—if you come to Dominique demanding “character development,” you’ll be skidding off the runway before takeoff. Orlan’s Dominique, when she isn’t dispatching hapless cartel stooges, is stiff as an airport security line: not exactly the life of the party, unless that party is a mass funeral for corrupt cops. But to complain about acting here is to show up at the buffet and ask for farm-to-table quinoa. The pleasure—small, guilty, thoroughly familiar—is in the anticipation: who gets killed next, and how creatively? Which walls will be shot through? What ridiculous household item will serve as an impromptu weapon?
There are narrative bits and pieces—a melancholy family, a secret-holding honest cop, children who, bravely or conveniently, barely speak—but it all adds up to the sort of sentimental booby-trap we’ve seen a dozen times. If you guess that the pregnant sister goes into labor mid-siege, congratulations, you’ve cracked the code. The real surprise (and here even a hard-bitten critic must tip her hat) comes in the final ten minutes, when Dominique unexpectedly abandons its safe little rulebook and throws a jackknife into the dark: a finale that jolts you awake just as your attention was beginning to flatline. The credit scene, too, has the cheek of a B-movie that knows it’s outlived its welcome and decides to wink as it leaves.
I’d call it a “fanboy film”—one for the bloodthirsty, the genre-hoppers, for anyone who’s ever complained that the cops in these movies never get what they deserve. Like John Wick's distant Ukrainian cousin, Dominique stalks her way through a swamp of bad taste and worse dialogue, lean and mean and utterly unbothered by the concerns of art.
There’s a beautiful shamelessness in its formula: you get the carnage you ordered, a side of family melodrama, and a dessert course involving a wheelchair-bound elder with one shot left in the chamber. The only thing missing, perhaps, is a Russian villain worthy of her next round—the film even teases us with future sequels in Moscow. All in all, it’s about as good as ordering room service and getting exactly what you expected—no more, no less, and, on occasion, just greasy enough to enjoy.
If you’re grading on a curve where “average” means “watchable with a cheap beer,” score it a 2.5/5—you’ll forget most of it by breakfast, but in the moment, with those last jarring death rattles, it’ll do just fine. Sometimes, a slick, cold dish of vengeance (with a little ash and cigarette smoke) really does hit the spot.
