DOMINIQUE is directed by Michael S. Ojeda (Avenged, The Russian Bride) and written by Ojeda and Oksana Orlan (The Russian Bride). The film is led by Oksana Orlan alongside Jose Conejo Martin (The Tax Collector, “Deputy”), Sebastian Carvajal (“Enfermeras,” “Thousand Fangs”), Maria Del Rosario (El Paraiso, “Echo 3”), Alanna De La Rossa (“Las Villamizar, Llanto Maldito), Gustavo Angarita (“Luna, la heredera,” The 33) and Maurice Compte (“Narcos,” “Hotel Cocaine”).
SYNOPSIS: Dominique is a brilliant assassin left for dead in a small South American village. After the only man she cares about is savagely killed, Dominique sacrifices herself to protect his innocent family and trains them to wage a war against the bloodthirsty authorities and brutal drug cartels responsible for his death.
Michael Ojeda stopped by to chat with us about the film.
What was the initial spark or idea that led to the creation of Dominique?
I grew up loving James Bond movies, so I knew I always wanted to do a James Bond movie, but as the years went by, I realized that the chances of me directing one is slim, and so I decided to come up with my own character for the most part. Instead of being a Bond type character, it’d be like more like a female Bond. I mean, the Bond women are more exciting in a way than James Bond himself, so I kind of designed it around that idea, and having known Oksana for so long, and her being Ukrainian and six feet tall, she was the perfect fit. She inspired the role to a degree, and that was kind of where it all came from, and then her and I kind of got together, and we just developed it as this anti-hero assassin from Ukraine. She finds herself in situations to protect the innocent, and so that’s kind of the basic idea of the story of Dominique, but it can go in many different directions. This particular movie, she’s protecting a family, a pregnant woman and her children from corrupt police, but we have a sequel planned as well where she protects a boy or where she helps a boy find his sister who gets picked up by human traffickers.
Can you talk us through the process of writing the script?
Sure. Process of writing the script. Well, the original script was a different script. It was a big film which kind of started with Dominique in a church in Latin America, and she’s this strange woman we don’t really know anything about, but she’s living in Latin America. She’s this Ukrainian woman, and she eventually finds, like I said, meets this little boy whose sister is kidnapped by human traffickers. So, that particular script I wrote, and we tried to get it off the ground. We even shot a proof of concept for it, and it was just too big. It was hard to raise the money and to get the financing for that film, so after about three, four years passed. I was thinking, okay, what can I do to introduce this character to the world? The world needs to meet this character, Dominique, and so I said, “well, what if I write a prequel? a story that won’t cost as much and set the stage for the sequel, and it’ll take place mostly at one house, one location”, and so I dove into that, and I wrote that. That took me about a month to knock out the first draft, actually, and that was it. I brought her to life, and it set the stage for the second movie. As far as the process of writing, I just locked myself away for two weeks, three weeks at a time. It takes me about three days to get into it. I don’t really enjoy writing, but I have to because I have ideas I want to get out there, so yeah, I just spent time writing. It took about a month, and that was it, and then we shopped it around, and within a year, I was able to get that one off the ground.
What was it about Oksana Orlan that made her perfect for the role of Dominique?
Well, she kind of was Dominique. She’s been my muse for a while. She inspired all the scripts, all the last three films I’ve written, she inspired. She inspired Savaged, aka Avenged, which she didn’t actually take the role after I wrote the script because it was just too dark for her, too violent. It was a horror, rape, revenge film; it came out 2016, I believe. Then I wrote Russian Bride that was inspired by her as well, and ultimately, it was after we got that film done, we jumped into Dominique, and she embodied all the traits of the character, minus the sweetness. She’s very sweet, but the character Dominique’s not very sweet, and she doesn’t like kids; so, she was the character to begin with in many ways, and so it was easy to just envision her as I wrote the script.
What was your process for working with the cast to develop their characters?
When you write a script, you kind of have in mind, a pretty strong, clear vision of how you want the actors to be, and what you’re looking for in terms of the physicality, and their delivery, and their personalities. But then once you start meeting certain actors, sometimes you find an actor that’s actually better than you envision the role, and so I tend to like, not all the time, but many times, find an actor who makes the role better than the role I wrote, and then I’ll go back and hit the script again, and shape it to fit their personality. Like for instance, the old man, the grandfather, was a very small, not insignificant, but it was a small role with very little dialogue in the movie. When I met him, I was just blown away by his charisma, and this old man needed to be captured, and when he spoke, it kept you riveted, and so I added more dialogue, I added a monologue, I just expanded on him. Then there’s another gentleman, Ulysses, who plays Detective Navarro. Detective Navarro, I didn’t really have a real clear vision of him, but when I met this guy, he was like, six and a half feet tall; huge, humongous guy, and I took advantage of his size. I’m like, okay, I’m going to rewrite the way she approaches this character and see what happens. I don’t want to give away as spoilers, but well, she uses him as a human shield, I guess I can say that, because he’s so big. That wasn’t in the original script, so I tailored it to the actor, so I write, I come up with ideas that I have in my head, but quite often, the actors make it even better.
How did you work with Narek Mirzaei in creating the right musical sound for the film?
Narek is an amazing composer; I’m very picky when it comes to composers. Over the years, I’ve struggled with finding the right composer for projects; I had a very good composer for my last film, but I wanted to go with someone new this time, and so, believe it or not, I discovered him on one of those sites, like Fever, or something. He was just this untapped talent, and I like to find untapped talents. He lived in Armenia, I believed, and he blew me away, and he nailed it. I couldn’t say more about him; I’m going to use him on the next one as well. If we do the sequel, and I composed some music in the movie too; I kind of taught myself how to write music and compose, because I was getting tired of searching for composers. This is before I met Narek; if I met Narek, I probably wouldn’t have taught myself how to play music, but I did. Narek’s amazing, I can’t say enough about him, and his music just totally captures the essence of the film.
How did you approach handling stunts or action sequences in Dominique, and what were the key challenges?
Well, I’ve always done, I think in all my films, the action is a standout; it goes way back to me doing Deadliest Warrior for Spike TV in the late 2000s. I did a lot of action for that, so I kind of cut my teeth on that show, and so, directing action and choreographing action comes kind of second nature for me. I do like to work with Spike choreographers and stunt people to help me make it more real and to fine-tune the process; but I definitely already have ideas in my head before I go into anything, exactly how I want it to kind of unfold, a fight or whatnot. As far as challenges, well, the two Spike choreographers who were helping me to come up with these fights were here in LA, and they couldn’t make it to Columbia, so I had to do it with them; teach some of the fights here, videotape it, and then take it to Columbia, and then show the fight choreographers and stunt team there, Then they had to relearn what we had done here in America, so that was a bit of a challenge. Oksana brings it; her physicality is quite amazing, which people will see when they see this movie. There would be one other challenge, and that would be the altitude; it’s 8,000 feet in Bogota, so for her, more than anything else, she ran out of energy pretty quickly because of that. That was a bit of a challenge. Then also getting all the coverage for the fight scenes; I like a lot of coverage, and we didn’t get enough while we were there, so I actually had to shoot a lot of pickups and inserts here back in LA; close-ups of people getting shot and whatnot. So, that’s how we handled the action.
What’s the most important quality you look for in your crew?
I want to enjoy working with them. I’d rather work with someone who is learning and wanting to learn, who has a great attitude, than someone who thinks they know it all, and carry a lot of baggage and weight with them on set. I like to have a crew that, and I always use the same people over and over again if I like them. I mean, that’s the way it is, I think, with most directors in this business, it seems like, Clint Eastwood has his team, and he likes to work with them, and you work with the same people over and over again if you can, because it makes things move a lot faster; you become a well-oiled machine. People, you can read each other’s minds; that’s the way it should be, that’s the way great movies are made, so that’s it.
Were there any cuts that you regret?
There was one stunt I cut out, and that was just for the sake of time, where she’s running, and a car’s barreling down on her from behind, and she jumps up, lands on the hood, sticks the machine gun in the barrel into the windshield, and tears the guy apart behind the wheel, and then the car hits the ambulance and throws her off. It would have been a nice little piece I wanted to do; maybe I’ll save it for another movie, but that was the only thing I cut from the production. As far as editing, I didn’t cut anything from editing. I’ve had the luxury of every movie I’ve made; I’ve had full creative control. No one’s ever really told me what to cut, and Lionsgate loved the whole film, so they didn’t ask me to cut anything either. Trim some time, they said, but that was about it. So luckily, I have not had to cut anything, because anyone told me, like some studio told me to cut something or anything like that. The movies that you see are pretty much my vision from top to bottom, so the only thing I lose is sometimes because of time on set, we don’t have the time to shoot things, but that’s about it.
How would you like Dominique to resonate with audiences?
I want Dominique to be something fresh for people; not only is she an action hero, but her stories move people on an emotional level. My favorite films, some of them, like The Professional, Leon: The Professional with Matilda and Leon, there was a lot of heart in that film, but there was also action. Other films like True Romance, where there was still a lot of emotion, feeling you really felt for this couple. So, I think Dominique, I would like it to be an action film that people are invested in emotionally. I think having done that, and if it works, then there’ll be others, there’ll be more movies like it. The sequel is already written, and it has a lot of heart as well. So yeah, I just think it’ll be something fresh for people. I think it’s something that’s needed right now, because I think a lot of the action fare today, and the movies are just so bombastic that you don’t really have time to feel anything. That’s how movies used to be made, where the emotion was the key to making a great movie. And then the action was kind of the icing on the cake. And that’s kind of where I’d like to go back to. And that’s what I think Dominique does.
Thank so much for taking the time to chat and all the best with the film.
Thank you!
DOMINIQUE will be in Theaters, On Digital and On Demand October 11, 2024.