Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Dom Hemingway’

“Dom Hemingway” is mostly a showcase of Jude Law, who gets to put on some weight and play an over the top character with a penchant for cussing and long monologues, and while he knocks his portion of the movie pretty much out of the park, the rest of the movie around him is merely good, with some flash and style to go along with a little bit of substance, but ultimately not really saying anything new or unique with the story and characters.

The movie starts with Dom Hemingway (Jude Law) in prison giving his first of many monologues, this one about how amazing and awe inspiring and epic his genitalia is, so your enjoyment of this opening will pretty much determine how you feel about the rest of this movie, because the character of Dom Hemingway, a safe cracker with what appears to be a lack of serious smarts, does have a penchant for launching into flowery and swear-laden soliloquies, usually directed at someone and often at their expense.

Shortly after this opening monologue, the obviously abrasive Dom gets released from prison, and heads right back to the streets, where it can be debated either he goes to look for trouble or where trouble looks for him. He hooks up with his old friend Dickie (Richard E. Grant), he tries to get paid for his 12-year stretch in prison from a crime kingpin (Demian Bichir), tries to reunite with his estranged daughter (Emilia Clarke), and tries to get work through the son of a former rival (Jumayn Hunter). Besides the part about him hanging out with his buddy, everything goes spectacularly wrong, and Dom is left swearing, screaming, punching, slashing, hacking, spitting and kicking through his day to day life. All the while monologuing his way through it all.

For the most part, “Dom Hemingway” matches the energy of its title character, as the movie swaggers and blusters its way around as well. And with all the speeches and ping ponging conversations throughout the film, it all kind of felt like an adaptation of a stage play, translated to the big screen, the definitive mark of a movie written by the director, because you can see where no one told him to cut down a little here and there. And SHOULD any of it have been cut down? Probably not. The long speeches, maybe aspiring for a little bit of that Paddy Chayefsky style, definitely add to the character of the movie itself, and goes hand in hand with this Dom Hemingway fella.

Definitely interesting, and funny throughout but also kind of sad, “Dom Hemingway” is worth checking out for the over the top Jude Law performance and Richard E. Grant alone. Hell, why isn’t Richard E. Grant in more movies? So what if he did “Hudson Hawk?” Let the man work! Shit, I could watch a prequel AND a sequel to this movie, as long as both of them revolved entirely around Dom and Dickie doing stuff together. Because that’s a match made in movie heaven.