Review: Dom Hemingway

Dom Hemingway is, when it really comes down to it, a film about Jude Law playing a cockney. The plot follows Law as the title’s namesake, a safecracking diamond geezer, who has just served serious bird for keeping schtum about his boss, Mr. Fontaine (Demain Bichir). On release, Dom and his dandy pal Dickie (Richard E. Grant) seek out the convivial Fontaine in order to collect his reward, plus ‘a present’. However, a near-fatal car crash and annoying robbery force Dom to reconsider his priorities in his search for better luck.

Dom Hemingway doesn’t know what it is – old-school gangster film or sentimental character study? Initially, it seemed the former: shots of Dom’s pointy boots and immaculately tailored three-piece suits, criminals getting up to no good with booze and coke, Motörhead blaring over the soundtrack. This is what the film is sold as: The Italian Job cooked in a Layer Cake with a sprinkling of Goodfellas glamour. Thus, we all relish Dom and Dickie snorting and swearing their way round London, shocking old grannies on the Eurostar and smoking a cigarette (each) in a pub. But as Dom seeks to mend his broken relationships the whole pace slows down. Dom the don leaves the screen and we have to endure Law exploring a hard-man’s sensitive inner soul: it worked in The Sopranos, it does not work here. By blending the two types of film, Dom Hemingway has neither the pulsating excitement of a crime caper nor the gritty insight of a kitchen sink drama.

Jude Law simply isn’t convincing as a flamboyant Cockney hard-man. The performance reminded me of Tom Hardy in Bronson, but it’s not Tom Hardy, it’s Jude Law. I suspect that he wanted to play a classic gangster, and this film serves as a vehicle for that ambition. So a flabby Law swaggers around, biting ears, bullying the weak and generally being uncouth. It isn’t like Law can’t play frightening characters – think Road to Perdition or even The Talented Mr. Ripley. But as Dom Hemingway, who looks like a Kray and speaks like John Cooper Clarke, his powers are wasted. He is also incredibly annoying. The writer must have thought that he was making Dom interesting through his verbal diarrhoea. Literary references mix with violent expletives and course sexual bravado (think Joey Barton) in cringing ridiculousness. After two minutes I just wanted him to shut up. The saving grace is Richard E. Grant, a much underrated actor with a comic flourish consummate enough to render any film watchable. Grant is convincing as a greasy lunatic who is one hand short of two. His various gags, visual and oral, are funny. I could have happily watched this East End Withnail drinking cognac in a mobster pub instead.

I was expecting a shallow but scintillating film. What I got was a reasonably enjoyable hour and a half of a few amusing scenes with boring interludes, and the rare chance to watch Law spitting on his own acting record.