An ugly, nasty Brit-flick with no redeeming features at all
FILM
DOM HEMINGWAY
Cert 15 | One star
SAFECRACKER Dom Hemingway (Jude Law pictured) has spent 12 years in prison. On his release he teams up with his friend Dickie (Richard E Grant) to retrieve the money he’s owed for keeping schtum. Along the way he settles old scores, seeks new employment, and tries to fix his relationship with his estranged daughter Evelyn (Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke).
The film is a throwback to the Cockney gangster flicks of the ‘90s, poor imitations of which are still churned out with disheartening regularity. Typically they star Danny Dyer and go straight to DVD – they should go straight to landfill. Dom Hemingway is no better.
Perhaps Law deserves some credit for uglying-up and attempting a role so radically different from the rest of his oeuvre, but while the character is crude in every sense, Law’s bombastic performance renders Dom Hemingway irredeemably grotesque. From an opening soliloquy about the magnificence of his penis, to the conclusion where he uses sickening threats of sexualised violence in the course of a robbery, it is apparent that whatever attempts he might make to improve things in his personal life, he will remain odious in the extreme. There is no reason to care what happens to him, and no reason to watch the film.