To me, this movie is perfection.

It is a performances centric movie

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Positives: interesting take on the rise and fall of Dutch crime lord Klaas Bruinsma, with strong performances by Frank Lammers and Marcel Musters in supporting roles. High production values, nice art direction, obviously a labor of love of sorts.Negatives: ham-fisted storytelling, clunky dialog, utter miscasting of Muller and Janzen as the leads.Overall: I could care less that the writers invoked their artistic license to re-imagine Bruinsma's life, but they should have gone ahead and cast a lead capable of projecting larger-than-life ambition. The opening and climax are OK, but the 110-minute running time feels like 220. Muller is not a bad actor - it's just that he's completely devoid of a dark side.

Personally I loved the movie. When I started watching it by coincidence I did not expect much from it, but after half an hour I was so entranced by it I watched the whole thing from the beginning to the end. So when I came to check the reviews I was in for a shock. People complained about a lot of things. I do agree on some points, but others I found completely ridiculous.First, some people said that nothing happened and that the movie was boring. Well apparently we were not watching the same movie, since you could observe the endless intrigue and machinations of Klaas. Yes, it is long winded from time to time, but then again a lot of people nowadays have the attention span of a five year old so I can understand that watching a movie with a lot of dialog and not a lot of action can be extremely hard for them. So if you are one of them I recommend you to watch Transformer movies and the like, I think those are perfect for the modern viewer.Second, some have said that this movie theme: "The life of a drug lord" is not well developed and could be presented better. The real theme of the movie is far from this however. Trust is in the spotlight and the struggle between trusting and betraying is well presented. I really liked the scene when he jumps down from the top of the stairs as a kid and his father below lets him fall and tells him to never trust anyone. This shows why he is so hellbent on trusting people. But as he is betrayed by more and more people he realizes that his father was right, so his defeat at the end is a personal defeat against his father and not a defeat towards the world.Other than that I more or less agree with other reviewers. People should take into consideration that film in Europe developed into one of the arts, while in America the film developed into an industry. Whole there is nothing wrong with that, this still affect the movies and their structure, so I think that people should be more understanding towards European cinematography.

After some quite OK Dutch action flicks, like Lek and Van God Los, Gerrard Verhage wants to make a movie about the life of a Dutch mobster. Well, mobster is a big word for Klaas Bruinsma. He isn't a real international big guy like George Jung (Blow) or Pablo Escobar. He is just an Amsterdam lowlife who made some money by selling soft-drugs. Things are often blown up in the Netherlands, and this movie is just an other example. But even then, the movie could be very nice if the story was okay told. Now there are major jumps in time: one day KLaas is just an ordinary drug-boy, the next shot he seems to be a big player in the drug-scene. Nobody knows how's that possible (except for those who read the book). The acting is really bad, the non-Dutch movie-watchers get to see one of the worst actresses in the Netherlands: Chantal Janzen. When you think she finally gets naked, then you are watching a stand in model. So: bad acting + bad montage + crap story = De Dominee.Please don't watch it, even if other people say it's good, because it isn't. I've warned you.

The brands in this film, like Suit Supply, take away from the story, cause it's supposed to be set in the eighties. It's not a very thrilling film. Also, the single from Intwine on the soundtrack is very bad, it has a chorus that is repeated numerous times', like "I'm a cruel man, I take it all away, I'm a cruel man I'm here to stay.." Jeeez couldn't those asswipes have come up with something better than that? I guess they wrote it in a couple of minutes..It's really annoying, just like the product placement in this filmproduct,that cashes in on the controversy and publicity around a criminal who should not be a celebrity like he is now made out to be, but should be forgotten like rats ought to be.