Dom Hemingway begins with a naked Jude Law receiving an oral sort of treatment just out of screen and shouting directing at the camera about how great his manhood is. This boastful monologuing is captured in a single take and goes on for quite some time. It’s sort of funny, sort of the actor laying it all on a bit too thick as the title character, an overweight and past his prime safecracker who’s just sprung from doing time in the big house.
This first scene is about as representative of how the rest of the movie is.
As the Cockney, brash, rebellious yet cool hooligan Dom Hemingway, Law gets to sink his teeth into a deliciously devilish character. Even going so far as gaining thirty pounds for the role to become the aged, stein-slamming huckster, the role gives the actor the entire sandbox to send up this mad Brit in. We see it all: Hemingway foaming at the mouth and beating the pulp out of a wrongdoer, binge partying with women and blow like a better coifed Charlie Sheen, and even tapping into more vulnerable, emotional territory, confronting his estranged daughter Evelyn (Emilia Clarke) and sobbing at the grave of his late wife. Throughout, one gets the sense that the actor might have had a more fulfilling time breathing life into Dom then the audience has in watching a movie about him.
Dom Hemingway begins with a naked Jude Law receiving an oral sort of treatment just out of screen, and shouting directing at the camera about how great his manhood is.
That’s because of the movie’s barely-there storyline. While the whole thing is conceived and dressed up as one big character study (or something less intellectual), there’s not a whole lot to follow along with. After we see Dom in all his aforementioned glory and leaving prison, doing time for keeping his mouth shut for a more powerful man Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir), he joins up with his slightly wiser criminal comrade Dickie Black (Richard E. Grant) and the two go from there. An obliterating party bender leads to Dom getting crossed, and moping and sermonizing on misfortune and the universe’s karmic backlash put on him for nearly the rest of the movie. It’s not all for not, however; Dom reconnects with his daughter Evelyn and meets a new family member, giving Law a good chunk of dramatic and serious-face screen time. Also tacked on late-in-the-game is a storyline of Dom trying to crack a safe for a once-rival gangster Lestor (Jumayn Hunter), which is introduced, watched, and then abandoned, all the same.
This Jude Law-starrer ends up exciting only in fleeting moments. Writer/director Richard Shepard uses most of the colors in the crayon box to concoct a story that’s equal parts brash-comedy, dramatic and tension-filled romping, and emotionally cathartic enlightenment. That, with all of Dom’s talk of “luck” on a large scale level, makes for a real grab bag of biography for our wild pal Dom and his crazy life. The decision to introduce us to Dom as he springs free from prison, well past the height of his career and most youthful bravado, is a choice that might have been made so that the audience could imaginatively fill in his must be unbelievable back story. But making the audience do all that work is a move doesn’t stick- we know that Dom is a wicked and funny (and wickedly funny) safecracker, but that’s about it. The story here isn’t about Dom and how he came to be; it’s about a middle-aged Dom and how he chooses to move forward with his, now sad, life. Inevitably, all roads lead to a Dom left with nothing, no money, no family, no purpose, but as we realize we don’t know much about him at all (except for that he’s Jude Law, and therefore, a sympathetic character), there’s not a whole lot of investment to be made in the whole charade. While there’s good fun in being along for the ride, sitting shotgun for all of Dom’s beer drinking and the mayhem that ensues, the experience leaving the theater is that of waking up the next morning, wondering if the hangover was ultimately worth it.
