El predicador

Tragedy, Betrayal and Intrigue... this film has a healthy dose of all of these. Not knowing of Klaas Bruinsma I considered this movie to be very well done. After reading up on him I could see how some, with the wrong expectations, could be disappointed after seeing this. It isn't really as accurate to the life of Klaas Bruinsma as some wanted it to be. Personally I think the right amount of artistic liberty was taken to give Klaas some redeeming qualities and to make the movie interesting. If you sit down expecting a movie "inspired by" or "loosely based on" Klaas Bruinsma then you should walk away gratified. The direction was excellent, the acting was excellent and the story was for the most part good. If I had to find something to criticize this movie for it would probably be that they jumped from him being a mid level dealer to a big time boss without much transition in between. This is very minor though. Anyone who does a little bit of reading on the real guy and rethinks the movie can fill in the blanks with a little imagination.

While I wouldn't give this a masterpiece/perfect/excellent rating of 9/10 or higher (which I would give to movies like The Godfather or The Usual Suspects) I think this film was above par. Solid 7 or 7.5/10. :) I hope this Director continues making films.

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.

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 was okay, the kind you rent on DVD on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Bur surely not worth the 9 euro's i had to pay to see it at the cinema! Acting was average at best and pretty bad at times. It's nice to see the locations in Amsterdam. Art direction was good, as was the music. The story was a bit boring, nothing much happened really. You just follow the main character, Klaas (Bruinsma), from the start of his criminal career to his demise and violent death years later. The plot you can see coming like light years ahead, no surprises there. Although i predicted what was to happen i still don't yhink it makes any sense. I'm curious what others think about this movie... 6/10

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.