Absolute Dominion Review: Absolutely Disappointing

Lexi Alexander’s Absolute Dominion is a tedious and cheap-looking actioner that borrows from many other superior films.

The end result is one of the most tedious “action” films I’ve ever seen, so much so that I thought maybe Alexander wasn’t actually its director.

The premise is not without potential. After an exposition-heavy prologue in the 2040s, Absolute Dominion takes us to the 2070s and centres on Sagan Bruno (Désiré Mia), a genetically-engineered martial artist who has been sent to fight at a tournament called, appropriately enough, “Absolute Dominion”. It turns out the planet has been immersed in a Holy War for the last couple of decades, but when Internet celebrity Fix Huntley (Patton Oswalt, clearly having fun) suggested that maybe all the world’s religions’ differences could be settled with a martial arts contest, they actually listened to him. So, Sagan has arrived on a mysterious island to represent the IHS (Institute of Humanism and Science), the only organisation participating in the event that isn’t, well, religious.

It’s because of the nature of the IHS and Sagan’s condition as a custom-made human that the latter starts being persecuted, with assassins trying to eliminate him. After all, he first has to go through a “Wild Card” tournament, which will hopefully allow him to eventually go against the top fifty fighters of the world. Thankfully, he has help. His dad, Jehuda Bruno (Alex Winter, of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure), is also his physician, and his mum, Professor Sitara Bruno (Olunike Adeliyi, of The Fire Inside), is his psychiatrist. Additionally, he has Naya Olinga (a game Andy Allo, of streaming series Upload and Pitch Perfect 3) as his security detail; thankfully, she’s extremely good at her job.

Story-wise, then, Absolute Dominion has a lot to work with, and could have even conveyed several messages related to religion, tolerance, violence and the use of ideology in war. Unfortunately, Alexander doesn’t seem very interested in any of this, barely paying lip service to a couple of interesting thematic elements through frankly embarrassing dialogue. The dialogue in general is pretty poor, actually, with supposed protagonist Sagan Bruno talking like a robot (I mean, he was genetically engineered, but he’s still human, so I have no idea why he talks like a Terminator), and the secondary characters communicating in a very direct, usually unnatural manner. The only line that made me chuckle was when a character called so-called antagonist Diane Zimmer (Julie Ann Emery) “Darth Karen”.

So, if Alexander wasn’t planning on taking advantage of the themes a context such as this could provide, then she’d at least make an effort to make Absolute Dominion as exciting as possible, right? Well, not exactly. For starters, even a film from 1995 like Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat (a guilty pleasure of mine) managed to give its fighters some interesting characteristics, and to set the kombats in visually arresting environments. In great contrast, Absolute Dominion has a bunch of regular-looking humans fighting in what’s supposed to be a stadium, but actually looks more like a big gym. They fight on top of mats, surrounded by extras who’d look more excited in a Pilates class.

All of this is extremely disappointing, considering Absolute Dominion takes place in a future full of holograms and shiny new tech. Unfortunately, the film’s visual effects are extremely poor, usually looking more like Adobe After Effects templates downloaded for free from the Internet than something crafted by an actual artist. The same 3D model of what’s supposed to be the exterior of the stadium is used over and over again, and most of the story takes place either indoors or in regular-looking exteriors, many of which include, at most, a fake-looking hologram floating around. It’s all very cheap-looking and amateurish, especially considering what can be done nowadays with free post-production and animation software such as Blender.

But what about the fights? They’re supposed to be the movie’s main attraction, right? And considering Alexander is a former World Kickboxing Champion, she should be able to craft some interesting encounters, no? Well, no. Most of the fights are shot rather lethargically, with long lenses that make the viewer feel quite distant from them, and camerawork that can only be described as “stiff”. Moreover, since Sagan is the only genetically engineered fighter in the tournament (which feels like cheating, by the way), he pretty much wins every fight extremely easily. There’s no tension, even when he gets hurt, because we know he’s much better than the rest of the contestants. This results in a suspense-free and overall tedious experience; in a martial arts film that can’t even feel exciting while showing us, well, the martial arts.

I couldn’t be more disappointed by Absolute Dominion. There’s nothing in Alexander’s resume that implies she’d be so bad at directing an action movie, yet here we are. This doesn’t seem to be like a product by the director of the brutal and underrated Punisher: War Zone, and certainly not by the woman responsible for Green Street Hooligans. Absolute Dominion is absolutely the poorest action movie I’ve seen in a while, and I really doubt it’s ever going to dominate either the streaming or TV landscapes.

Absolute Dominion will be released in US theaters and on digital platforms on May 9, 2025.