The
title character is not, as one might imagine, a wayward Italian cousin
of
Ernest Hemingway, but a wayward Cockney ex-con with anger issues and an
oozing id. Not content to hunt down the man who took up with his wife
while he was in prison, he also mouths off, hilariously, to the Russian
crime boss who has the money he’s been owed for a dozen years. In the
opening scene, spittle flows from his mouth as he spews a profane
ode to his own member, and that is not the only
scene in which that organ enters the plot. It’s a rather different role
for Jude Law, who is entirely convincing as someone who might beat you
if crossed. And, although he has a way with words — he’ll “gut you with a
dull cheese knife and sing Gilbert and Sullivan while I do it” — he’s
not really charming. Not unless it’s charming to compare one’s one face to an abortion, as Dom does after one of the scrapes he gets into in the course of the several days the film covers.
This not-so-charming personality and his well-crafted dialogue — courtesy of director Richard Shepherd (The Matador)
— are the primary appeal of the film, which cannot quite be called a
thriller. Dom’s attempts to reconcile with his understandably estranged
daughter (Emilia Clarke) do not measurably humanize the character, and the plot overly relies on coincidence and, I think, one big plot hole, namely why Dom is not re-arrested for severely beating a man before numerous witnesses within half a day of being released.
viewed 4/8/14 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and posted 4/10/14
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