Having not dived too deeply into recent B-movie extreme action cinema, I was not familiar with Ukrainian-American model-actor Oksana Orlan, but apparently she’s a formidable presence in that particular field. Here she fleshes out a role she originated in a 2015 action short by director Michael S. Ojeda about an assassin who survives an ambush that kills her boyfriend as they are trying to start a new life together. Ojeda continues the story with the woman, Dominique, flying a plane that is shot down over Colombia. She survives this ordeal, too (she’s already got a huge tattoo of a phoenix on her back), as well as being felt up by the nasty cartel factotums who did the shooting because they suspect—correctly—that the plane is transporting cash and weapons. Dominique makes short work of these goons, thus laying out for the audience her skills as a killing machine, not to mention a badass who doesn’t give a damn about anybody else. 

Ojeda and Orlan pile on the devil-may-care attitude after Dominique finds a small town where she can lick her wounds. She drinks hard and beds a local police officer (Sebastian Carvajal) who seems to be the only public official around not beholden to the cartel, which is looking for her since, in addition to slaughtering their employees, she’s stashed the loot somewhere secret. She makes friends with the family of the officer, which include a father in a wheelchair and a pregnant sister and her two kids, and any astute action movie lover who’s seen this kind of setup before will know that these non-combatants are not safe any more, despite Dominique’s initial reluctance to get involved. 

Fortunately, Orlan knows the assignment and maintains her character’s air of cool professional brutality until the end, even as the body count climbs into the stratosphere. What perhaps sets Dominique the movie apart from its ilk is its nihilism. Ojeda obviously feels his audience can take the kind of storytelling that leaves no one standing, regardless of their innocence in the scheme of things, except the person who is obviously slated to continue the story into a subsequent feature…and more, if the B-movie gods are willing. It’s probably an over-determined ambition on Ojeda’s part, but I can’t say I’m not curious to see how Dominique’s further adventures pan out. 

In English and Spanish. Opens Nov. 21 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068).

Dominique home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Dominique the Movie, LLC