Dom Hemingway

You’d look pissed, too, if you had to wear these clothes.

You’d look pissed, too, if you had to wear these clothes.

Rated 3.0

Jude Law grew mutton-chop sideburns and added about 30 pounds of English-ale belly to play the title character in Dom Hemingway, and that slight deglamorization seems to have recharged his batteries. This is easily his best performance in a decade, and it is especially nice to see him resharpen the comic timing that had been blunted by hacks like Guy Ritchie and Nancy Meyers. For a while, this stylish mix of hard-man moxie and mannered British comedy works quite well, thanks to Law's excellent lead performance and oddball supporting work by Richard E. Grant, Demian Bichir and Jumayn Hunter. Law's braggadocio-filled Dom is a criminal who “plays by the rules,” an enormous mistake in a world where all of the rules are unwritten and rarely followed. Unfortunately, for a film that begins by soliloquizing its protagonist's penis, Dom Hemingway ends up surprisingly short on balls.