De dominee

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.

For a dutch production, this one is pretty good. Although based on Klaas Bruinsma, the movie doesn't use all parts of the real life of Bruinsma at points, which is easily acceptable to actually spice up the movie. Only thing that had me curling my toes was the awful acting at times. Of the three main characters I'd say Frank Lammers puts on a marvelous performance, in great contrast with Chantal Janzen who I found hard to believe at times. The corny lines might not have been her fault, but those lines could have definitely been brought more realistically to actually represent an emotion like anger.. Peter Paul Muller did an OK job I guess, but it didn't really have me as excited as Frank Lammers who to me really stands out of the crowd with this performance.. Enough about acting then, the story: it's really a story with a great sense of irony in it. The man who wanted to be the biggest without losing himself in the criminal world of liquidation, but in the end he throws all morals overboard just to stay on top.. good enough for me! 7 out of 10 for a decent story, but corny dialogues at times and besides Frank Lammers' excellent performance, it really shows what a poor movie country Holland really is IMHO.

To begin with, I have to admit I've never been a big fan of the Dutch movie-genre. Unfortunately watching De Dominee hasn't made me change my mind. It shares some common flaws, like having a plot that's too predictable and linear for my taste.

Worse however is that the cast has their dialogues as if they were stage-actors in a play. Unfortunately this is common too in many Dutch movies and, at least to me, makes it impossible to feel any kind of involvement with the main characters.

The actor that plays Adri (I'm sorry, I forgot his name at the moment) is at least delivering a decent performance, and is one of the reasons I don't rate this movie even worse.Another reason is the fact that at least it seems to have had some budget, and the production seems professional.

Ironically the fact that the acting is often too articulated might not be so much of a problem if you don't speak Dutch,although I already warned you that the plot isn't spectacular either, but at least it might make it an acceptable movie to watch.

The movie is pretty good, as long as you haven't read the book or don't know the real life of Klaas Bruinsma. There are many changes in the film. Like people are being killed that weren't in the real life. The book only speaks of 9 liquidations and I don't know how many there were in the movie, but more then 9.

Overall the movie is pretty good. The acting is believable and Chantal Jansen surprised me. Though she isn't a tough bitch as his wife in the book...

Well if you haven't read the book I recommend the movie. If you've read it... don't go to see it as you will be disappointed...

It's a mediocre film, but I think the main problem is Peter Paul Muller is not all that convincing as a bad guy of this magnitude. I surely wasn't impressed with his performance. Also, some of the scenery makes you think the events took place in the eighties, but other scenes are like they happened in our time... there are plenty of thing that don't look like 15-20 years ago.

And how come Tygo Gernandt is ALSO in this movie? He is making way too much movies, someone should say to him that it's a Tygo overkill.

It was more hype than quality that made this movie, but still it's nice to see a new genre being tried in Dutch Cinema, and overall the acting was good.