ABSOLUTE DOMINION is the new one from writer/director Lexi Alexander (GREEN STREET [HOOLIGANS], PUNISHER: WAR ZONE), her first feature film in 15 years (she’s been doing television). If you’re like me you’ve been interested in her since her PUNISHER movie, are very aware that she was a German kickboxing champion sponsored by Chuck Norris to immigrate to the U.S., where she portrayed Kitana on a Mortal Kombat live tour, and were excited to hear she was doing a martial arts movie. She’s also known for being fearlessly outspoken, particularly about Palestinian and Arab issues, so it was extra promising that this seemed to have an aspect of social commentary to it.

Well, the results are interesting, at least. The movie is primarily set in 2063 A.D., nineteen years after an era of devastating terrorist attacks by various factions of religious zealots. What changed? A live streamer named Fix Huntley (Patton Oswalt, BLADE: TRINITY) jokingly suggested that each religion should train a fighter to enter a tournament called “The Battle of Absolute Dominion” to decide which religion the world would follow. The idea immediately caught on, now Huntley oversees the tournament and I guess everyone just goes along with the results. World peace. Not bad.

How it works is left almost entirely unspecified. There are clearly still different religions practiced – they’re all training fighters for the tournament, right? The movie takes place when, as Huntley puts it, “The last wild card tournament is upon us, and the 50 warriors left standing after this weekend are gonna decide our faith.” As far as we hear none of them represent a currently dominant religion – instead we hear about Celestians, Dashafaris and Pentatists. Do their churches close and reopen after every tournament depending on who the winner is? I guess so. This world seems honestly utopian, but I think it’s less a vision of a possible future than a thought experiment: accepting the premise of peace created by everyone having the same religion, would it be worth it?

One skeptic is Professor Amanda Harris (June Carryl, JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX), who notes that apocalyptic religions like Pentatism (and maybe other ones she didn’t name) believe the world is doomed and therefore are not about progress but “regressing to earlier times.” But “even the most tolerant ideology will feel oppressive to those who will be asked to give up the culture and traditions they grew up with.” She does think there is hope from one fighter. She has prayed for “a miracle,” ironically in the form of an atheist winning.

Our protagonist is Sagan Bruno (Désiré Mia), a lanky 6’ 3” fighter representing the non-religious Institute of Humanism and Science. He’s a genetically modified person created by Dr. Jehuda Bruno (Alex Winter, DEATH WISH 3 [also producer]), who’s really not a mad scientist, but an idealist and supportive father. His mother is Professor Sitara Bruno (Olunike Adeliyi, SHE NEVER DIED), who he thinks disapproves of him, but really she feels guilty for giving away her child for this dangerous business. He could do much more than fight – he’s also very smart, but a little embarrassed of it, since it was a genetic modification.

Sagan is accompanied to the stadium on Shalom Island by his father and his loyal trainer Anton Moskovitz (Mario D’Leon, “Bubba’s Inmate Friend,” THE SMURFS), and is soon joined by a new “personal protection officer” Naya Olinga (Andy Allo, PITCH PERFECT 3), in case his controversial atheist background inspires assassination attempts (which it does).

He’s going through a couple things. For unknown reasons he has bouts of freezing up and blacking out, which could get him disqualified from the tournament (and does get him kicked repeatedly in the face when it happens during a fight). The other thing is that he sometimes think God is talking to him. Which makes him question his (lack of) faith, though he says “it could be stress-induced hallucinations.” Word gets out and the commentator Ceylon (performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon) starts calling him “the heathen who’s BFF with God.”

That’s one inspired futuristic touch: having the world’s biggest combat sports event hosted by a bearded, pink-haired drag queen. I’m less fond of the movie’s references to Joan Rivers, Deadpool and the Disney song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” But this is a personal thing – I have a harder time accepting that 40 years from now someone will use “Darth Karen” as an insult than all the equally far-fetched things the movie depicts. It’s a very indie movie, with some production value in its camera moves but not many other places, so thankfully they go light on the future tech. There’s one futuristic vehicle (the air train – an inverted monorail hanging from a rail extended over the ocean), and smart phones inside people’s palms, but mostly they just lightly dress ordinary buildings they had access to, throw in a couple sleek viewing screens and have people saying stuff like “Denying a member of the World Coalition access is a violation of the Beirut Act!”

From a fighting tournament perspective I think the primary location is lacking. I believe in the LIONHEART rule (also a fighting video game rule) that the best of the genre keep switching up the fight venues to keep it visually interesting, but even those that don’t you want to have a cool looking place with some torches or some despicable rich people making bets or some shit. For this movie, I’m afraid, all of the fights are just on a mat in a nice but ordinary gym.

More worrisome, for a while, the fights don’t offer much in the way of storytelling or distinguishable opponents. But I do like the choreography – our killer beanpole hero may not be as tall as Kareem but he has a bit of that GAME OF DEATH look to his kicks. There are plenty of flips and rolls and leg locks. Philip Tan (BLOODSPORT 2 and 3, TRUE VENGEANCE, SPEED RACER) is the stunt coordinator and the fight coordinators are Fabien Gourchon (DIE FIGHTING) and Arnold Chon (martial arts choreographer, ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: ROAD CHIP).

The most interesting story element in the fights is the care Sagan shows for his opponents. For example Mestre Gato Santo (Fabiano Viett), a Celestian who practices capoeira, drips sweat onto the mat while doing a hand stand. When he slips on his own puddle and flips out of control Sagan tries to catch him, and suffers a serious injury from it, but nobody tries to tell him it was a mistake.

We get a few staples of the form: a short montage of people practicing katas on rocks and drone shots of people sparring in exotic locations with beautiful views. We do not get important traditions like a special move, a hissable rival (with or without climactic moment of sportsmanship), a corrupt ringmaster or (tragically) any training montages. I do think this was a conscious artistic decision to steer away from the most familiar conventions of the genre, and I can respect that, but not as much as I can enjoy a great fighting tournament movie that delivers on all the great fighting tournament shit. Also it’s something you can get away with better if you aim for a more cinematically artful take on the genre. With its stilted acting and bright digital cinematography this is not REDBELT, or even FIGHTING. It’s a b-movie whether it likes it or not.

There’s some drama around Sagan’s security – he bonds with his cool bodyguard as she protects him from attempts on his life and confesses she believes in God but also the institute’s goal of not forcing everyone into a religion. Some of Sagan’s opponents, including Nizar Haddad (Junes Zahdi, DOG) and Ammon Jones (James Adam Lim, 4 episodes of Power Book IV: Force), voluntarily shield him from a sniper (Ashley Flowers, also the property master) on the way to the arena while the higher ups argue whether they’re practicing good sportsmanship or worshipping him as a messiah. Actually it’s because if he gets assassinated they’ll miss out on fighting him.

I do have to note that the one real villain (Julie Ann Emery, HITCH) is given the last name Zimmer, but otherwise it seems to me free of allusions to specific religions, and sincere in its message that everyone should be free to practice their beliefs and cultures. Dr. Bruno and the other IHS characters are an unusually positive portrayal of atheism, though as always it ends up leaning toward non-specific spiritual beliefs. I suppose the pleasant ambiguity of the ending makes it ultimately an agnostic film.

It’s kinda sweet that Oswalt seems to have become friends with Alexander after bringing many people around on PUNISHER: WAR ZONE with podcasts and screenings a few years after it came out. At the time I thought yeah, no shit Patton, I was there opening night, the parkour rocket launcher scene got a huge reaction, some of us have been saying this. But my positive review from the time kept calling it “stupid,” so I still had more to learn. Anyway the part is mostly just being a guy on TV, but there’s one scene that takes advantage of his more advanced acting skills and makes his participation important.

To be honest, I don’t think most action fans will enjoy this movie. In a press release, Nick Savva, the general manager at Giant Pictures, described it as “electrifying” and “adrenaline-fueled,” which are descriptions I can’t imagine any viewer ever using to describe any part of the movie. What’s honestly interesting about it is that it doesn’t seem to be aiming for that at all – it’s the most serene fighting tournament movie I can think of. The occasional feints at bombast don’t feel like the main thrust of the movie; more often it’s people quietly and slowly talking. You’d expect a movie with this title and genre to have constant techno beats telling you it’s exciting, but that’s rarely the case here, and I noticed one dramatic dialogue scene where they added ambient sounds of birds chirping outside. That’s confidence.

I hope this makes sense, but ABSOLUTE DOMINION kind of seems like the martial arts movie that the Zion Council in THE MATRIX RELOADED would watch instead of MORTAL KOMBAT, KICKBOXER or BLOODSPORT.

I can’t claim to love this movie, and I initially did find it disappointing how it looks and how aggressively it rejects the rowdiness of Alexander’s earlier movies, which are also slicker and more fun to watch. But by the end I was somewhat charmed by ABSOLUTE DOMINION’s sincerity and stubborn insistence on not being the normal version of this type of movie. Afterwards I decided to watch PUNISHER: WAR ZONE again, and it’s pretty funny to compare the two. Frank Punisher is also questioning his beliefs, both religious (he was once in the seminary, now he says “Sometimes I’d like to get my hands on God”) and otherwise (he’s so disillusioned by accidentally killing an undercover agent that he might retire from his career of mass murdering criminals), but in every other way they’re opposites. This one has constant shiny daylight instead of darkness and colored lights, soothing synth textures instead of a Rob Zombie theme song, earnest pleas for peace instead of garish digital blood splatter. The Punisher thinks nothing of casually demolishing people’s heads with bullets or fists, and the files of his suspected murders fill up a room bigger than my apartment, while Sagan is always calm and kind and tries not to hurt people even in a full contact fight to stop the apocalypse.

It’s also kind of cool if you consider Mia as a modern answer to JCVD and his knockoffs. Like Daniel Bernhardt, Michael Dudikoff and Jason Statham he started as a model (in his case with Taekwondo training), and like Van Damme, Bernhardt and Olivier Gruner in their early roles he has a thick European accent and fairly stiff line readings, clearly hired for his looks and moves over his acting. But the 2025 edition also has African heritage, is in good shape without looking like a bodybuilder, and his aura is one of gentle thoughtfulness, completely non-toxic in his masculinity, and not just as set up for a part where he gets pushed too far and turns brutal at the end. That never happens. It’s not that kind of movie.

To me it’s not an entirely successful movie, but it’s fair to say it’s a special one.