The title character in Dom Hemingway is always in a determined hurry, one of those guys whose brow is always 12 inches in front of his feet. He is played by Jude Law as a force of nature who takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. Dom Hemingway is a none-too-smart professional safe-cracker who has taken the rap for his partners and is just getting out after twelve years in the slammer. He’s been fantasizing about what he wants to do when he gets out, and he intends to do it all in as compressed a time period as possible. Unfortunately, as he tells a small boy, “Dom is English for unlucky sonofabitch”. His headlong onslaught into misadventure is ribald, profane and pretty funny.
This movie is not a masterpiece. Think of Dom Hemingway as The Wolf of Wall Street Lite. Still, Jude Law is very watchable and very funny, as is Richard E. Grant as his almost-as-unlucky and almost-as-dim buddy. Director Richard Shepard made a much better movie in 2005, The Matador with Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear. Still, Dom Hemingway works as a pedal-to-the-metal romp.
I saw Dom Hemingway three weeks ago at Cinequest 2014.