Rating: NR | Runtime: 101 minutes
Release Date: May 9th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Giant Pictures
Director(s): Lexi Alexander
Writer(s): Lexi Alexander

Humanity does not find comfort in peace. Only conflict.

An influencer’s flippant joke has ushered in close to twenty years of peace at the start of Lexi Alexander’s 2063-set Absolute Dominion, despite an all-out apocalyptic assault ravaging the planet to its breaking point. Rather than that unyielding destruction being a result of nations seeking land, however, this World War was born out of a new era of religious crusades. And why not? Expansion via death like America’s own “Manifest Destiny” has always been steeped in the belief that the aggressor’s God granted permission through some unspoken mandate.

It’s happening today courtesy of Israel’s theft by way of genocide of Palestine under the belief that their God meant for it to be theirs. It’s an undercurrent of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine. And, at the rate republicans are rewiring our own government here in the United States to become a Christofascist state while demanding to buy and annex Greenland and Canada respectively, the science fiction behind Alexander’s film proves highly plausible insofar as its expository history. YouTuber Fix Huntley’s (Patton Oswalt’s) idea of a Mortal Kombat-esque battle royale to declare the winner? Not so much.

Just as Alexander is an expert on the oppressive violence ethnostates (made more dangerous when conflating ethnicity with religion as Israel does and MAGA is attempting to do) can inflict upon their targets being a Palestinian herself, she is also an expert in martial arts. So, why not distill this political and social unrest into a winner-take-all tournament wherein every religion chooses a fighter to be its proxy on the mat? With a decade of planning to ensure the sanctity of the event and another decade to continue training while also beginning the preliminary rounds necessary to field a Top 50 list of contenders, the championship is finally upon this planet reborn in Huntley’s unlikely image.

To think about fifty-plus religions is to consider a world where the infinite number of micro-genres currently used by pretentious music lovers to set their favorite band apart from the rest of the pop, rock, and indie world as the blueprint for spirituality’s myriad forks. So, don’t expect to see Christianity versus Judaism versus Islam here. Yes, one fighter prays to Allah on-screen and others surely commune with Buddha, Vishnu, Christ, Yahweh, etc., but it’s often the differences within one’s own faith in the same God (see Baptist versus Catholic versus Protestant) that causes some of the worst conflicts. And if only one can win—ostensibly erasing all other religions from existence—those differences matter.

Absolute Dominion isn’t simply a B-level popcorn actioner taking us through the ranks to declare a winner, though. No, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say Alexander ends things before the championship round can even begin let alone crown a victor. No, her purpose here is to lift the veil on our collective fear and hate for the “other.” The notion that freedom of religion has become a concept to dismantle rather than champion in large part due to a rise in Islamophobia stemming from 9/11 and the Gulf Wars. It’s ironic to me considering the only religion I’ve ever encountered as being totalitarian in nature is that of the Born-Again Christians considering one once told my Indian friend that his Hindu parents were going to Hell unless they let Jesus “save” them.

As such, the lead of this film doesn’t ascribe to any religion. Sagan Bruno (Désiré Mia) is conversely the chosen fighter of the Institute of Humanism and Science. Simply put, he’s an atheist. And since there’s nothing that scares a religious zealot more than someone who doesn’t believe any God exists, you know they must be shaking at the prospect of an atheist winning a mutually agreed upon competition that would give him the power to outlaw the very idea of God. Well, they will once Bruno’s unknown entity begins to prove himself during the final wild card round. Because it’s one thing to let the atheists enter a fighter. It’s another beast entirely to discover he might stand a chance.

I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just say there’s another factor to Bruno’s story that risks upending everything people like Commander Zimmer (Julie Ann Emery) hold dear. Something big enough to land him in the crosshairs of a military-backed assassination plot that inevitably only amplifies his position as a disruptor capable of uniting all of humanity. Huntley says it best when considering the fact that our species has all but driven itself to the brink of extinction in a multitude of Gods’ names. Why wouldn’t they all (or the one true God, if such a being exists) back the guy who’s not looking to hide behind dogma? That doesn’t mean power wouldn’t still get to Bruno’s and the IHS’s heads. We simply know that it has historically gotten to everyone else’s already.

It’s a fun bit of drama both externally (Zimmer is bloodthirsty) and internally (Sagan’s parents, Alex Winter’s Dr. Jehuda Bruno and Olunike Adeliyi’s Professor Sitara Bruno, genetically altered him to be the most athletic and intelligent fighter imaginable) where Bruno’s motivation and potential lie. Things can skew a bit comical via Hunger Games homage when you consider the tournament’s flamboyant host Ceylon (Alok Vaid-Menon), but the dystopian nature of these things generally create thematic overlap since the post-capitalist economic divide is an impossible reality to ignore. Bruno’s coach (Mario D’Leon’s Anton) and security detail (Andy Allo’s Naya Olinga) fulfill their own clichéd narrative roles too. The goal is to allow these archetypes the authenticity to transcend familiarity.

I think they do. Add Fabiano Viett and Junes Zahdi as opponents and the cast has the earnest charm to lean into the genre’s inherent cheesiness and not subvert the message Alexander has instilled as the film’s backbone. The same goes for the obvious budgetary constraints. You can either dismiss the whole on looks alone or you can appreciate that the real meat here is in the fight choreography and dialogue. It’s the hope in Naya’s explanation for backing the IHS and the cynicism in Zimmer declaring that a bona fide “Messiah” is a liability rather than the literal goal of this entire contest simply because it wouldn’t be her Messiah that earns our attention regardless of any unpolished CGI.

In the end, Alexander has manufactured a New New Testament in an age of technological advancement wherein the entire world is able to simultaneously witness a single God-like figure. Whereas we’ve spent millennia separating ourselves because of literal carbon-copied deities due to our inability to embrace peace and equality when greed and vanity prove too attractive to ignore, we’re living during a time now where indisputable proof of a creator should unite even the most hardened zealots. Unfortunately, the reason Alexander surely stopped short of providing that fantasy as more than a possibility is because too many of us still deny reality to maintain a status quo of control through ungodly malice.

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Désiré Mia and Alex Winter in ABSOLUTE DOMINION; courtesy of Giant Pictures.