Andrew Dominik (born 7 October 1967) is a New Zealand-born Australian film director and screenwriter.
He is known for directing the crime film Chopper (2000), the revisionist Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), the neo-noir Killing Them Softly (2012), and the pseudo-biographical psychological drama Blonde (2022). He has also directed two episodes of the Netflix series Mindhunter in 2019.
Works he has directed with pages on TV Tropes:
- Chopper (2000)
- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
- Killing Them Softly (2012)
- Mindhunter (2019, directed 2 episodes)
- Blonde (2022)
Tropes associated with his works include:
- Biopic: Aside from Killing Them Softly (a neo-noir crime film), all of his theatrical films directed so far are essentially biopics, although each of them noticeably puts their own spin on the genre: Chopper is based on the autobiographical writings of Australian criminal-turned-author Mark "Chopper" Read, and the film is ostensibly about the title character trying to justify his crimes (and enjoying the media attention he receives in the meantime); The Assassination of Jesse James... is a Deconstruction of the James myth, as a man normally portrayed in folklore as a romantic Robin Hood-esque Anti-Hero (noted in the title by how his death is treated as an "assassination" and Robert Ford, his killer, is called a "coward") is shown (much more accurately to history) as a cold, dangerous, paranoid, Ax-Crazy lunatic, while the normally-vilified Ford starts off with an unsettling hero-worship towards James, but gradually becomes disillusioned with — and eventually terrified of — the infamous outlaw; and Blonde, even before its release, was noted to be "biographical fiction" rather than a straight biopic.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: All of his films (except Blonde) deal with crime in some way, but they are all aversions as they all make a life of crime seem the least appealing possible. Chopper has the title character enjoy the media attention he gets, but he's shown to be an absolutely brutal criminal and ultimately ends up the same if not worse than he started the film with; The Assassination of Jesse James... takes James, usually portrayed as a romantic Robin Hood-esque Anti-Hero and shows him as a paranoid murderer, and Killing Them Softly has gangsters, once the embodiment of free living, shown now as being just businessmen, complete with budget restrictions and public relations, hitmen are not mythic badassesm and it's clear that the mob has fallen very far from the days when they reigned supreme, from low-level thieves and enforcers who only do it because they can't find legitimate work to hitmen whose best days are long behind them to bosses who now come across more as frustrated middle-managers dealing with other bosses, bad employees and a changing world.
