Dom Hemingway

The man. The myth. The legend. The cologne.

(2013) Crime Comedy (Fox Searchlight) Jude Law, Richard E. Grant, Demian Bichir, Emilia Clarke, Madalina Ghenea, Kerry Condon, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Jordan Nash, Jumayn Hunter, Samio Olowu, Hayley-Marie Coppin, Jeanie Gold, Glenn Hirst, Philippe Pierrard, Luca Franzoni, Richard Graham, Simeon Moore, Nick Raggett, Kaitana Taylor, Colette Morrow. Directed by Richard Shepard

Some people are just larger than life. They can get away with things simply by the force of their charm, no matter how serious the offense. Of course, they can’t always get out of the way of their own shortcomings just like the rest of us but we can forgive them the kinds of lapses that we ourselves would never get a second chance for.

Dom Hemingway (Law) fancies himself the world’s greatest safe cracker, a giant among men. His prowess with women is legendary and his reputation in the criminal underground of London is second to none. He is also a stand-up guy – he’s just being released from prison after spending 12 years there – many more than he would have spent if he’d ratted out his boss, Don Fontaine (Bichir), a Russian mafia sort living in the South of France now with his Romanian girlfriend Paolina (Ghenea).

Life has passed Dom by in many ways while he was away; his wife divorced him, remarried – one of his old mates, one Sandy Butterfield (Raggett) – and finally, passed away from cancer. His daughter Evelyn (Clarke) has been raised by another man and hardly knows her father at all. In fact, she doesn’t want to know him. After all, he chose a Russian mobster over his family.

Now that he’s out, he wants to make up for lost time. He stops off to pay Sandy a visit and express his disappointment – Dom has a bit of an anger issue. He meets up with his one true remaining mate Dickie Black (Grant) who in the interim had his hand shot off but is still Don Fontaine’s loyal man. After a few days of cocaine and whores, the two go off to see Fontaine.

Dom is on quite the bender. His employer is happy to see him and is ready to give Dom the payday he deserves – just under a million pounds. That’s not enough for Dom – he wants not just what he’s owed with interest but he also wants “a present.” He’s raging, a magnificent scoundrel who bellows his discontent at the universe and takes out his anger and frustration on his boss, never a good idea.

Dom in spectacular Dom Hemingway fashion loses his money and has to scramble, asking the son (Hunter) of his most hated rival for work. In between he is trying to reconcile with his daughter who now has a son (Nash) and a boyfriend (Stewart-Jarrett). Dom looks at his daughter and sees the life that could have been. Is the life he has enough?

This is definitely a character study and it all depends on the performance you get out of the lead actor. In this case, Law is more than up to the task, delivering one of the finest performances of a career full of them. Hemingway is a mesmerizing character, one any actor would love to sink his teeth into, and Law responds. Your eyes are always on him whenever he’s onscreen (which is almost the entire movie) and you’re never quite sure what he’s going to do next.

His banter with Dickie is priceless and Grant, known for different sorts of roles, holds up his end. Neither of these guys is particularly bright so much as they are clever. There’s a scene in which Dom is trying to crack a safe by apparently dry-humping it. It is comical but bizarre until Dickie explains what’s really going on.

The problem with a character and a performance like this is that nobody can really stand up against it. It’s like trying to do wind sprints into the teeth of a hurricane; all you can do is hope to stay standing but it’s unlikely that you will. The other actors mean well and do pretty well given the circumstances – Clarke (best known for her very different role in Game of Thrones) holds out better than most but in general it’s the Jude Law show.

And that’s fine – he’s given some excellent dialogue to work with even if the plot is of the been-there-done-that variety. I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing this again. It’s the kind of movie that I suspect will yield some rich depth once you get past being mesmerized by Law. Nobody is doing crime/gangster movies like the Brits these days and Dom Hemingway is a proper villain who will hold up with the creations of Guy Pearce and such classics as Sexy Beast.

REASONS TO GO: Jude Law is magnificent. Grant perfectly cast. Cockney criminal poetry.

REASONS TO STAY: Nobody else can really hold up to Dom’s over-the-top personality.

FAMILY VALUES: Lots of f-bombs and other colorful English language, graphic nudity and sexual content, a cornucopia of drug use and a fair amount of violence.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Jude Law gained 30 pounds for the role by drinking ten Coca-Colas a day in order to put on the kind of empty calories that Dom would consume through alcohol.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/21/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 59% positive reviews. Metacritic: 55/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Locke

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Vampires

Don't you just hate getting lipstick smeared all over your face when you kiss? Wait a minute that's not lipstick...

(2010) Mockumentary (IFC Midnight) Carlo Ferrante, Vera Van Dooren, Pierre Lognay, Fleur Lise Heuet, Paul Ahmarani, Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld, Julien Dore, Batiste Sornin, Thomas Coumans. Directed by Vincent Lannoo

If vampires are to survive in the world they must by necessity keep well-hidden. For one thing, people would panic if they knew there were superior predators living amongst us, indistinguishable from our neighbors. For another, the panic would lead to genocide as humans have a vast numerical superiority; no, vampires benefit from secrecy.

Which makes a documentary about their society all the more puzzling. After several aborted attempts (when camera crews got invited into vampire enclaves and ended up being the main course), a film crew finally got placed with a vampire family in Brussels.

Vampire families are a bit different than humans. For one thing, they can’t procreate sexually (although they have plenty of sex). Children are brought into a vampire family by turning young people into vampires. However, vampires don’t age once they are turned so turning children is frowned upon – instead it is usually teens and youngsters who are turned.

This particular family’s patriarch is Georges (Ferrante), an old school bloodsucker who is a bit spineless in a lot of ways. He adheres strictly to the code of conduct set for vampires going back centuries from the first vampires. His wife Bertha (Van Dooren) is a bit more bloodthirsty but she’s a bit of a hausfrau as well. She and Georges make a good match.

Their kids are a bit of a problem. Grace (Heuet) is tired of her immortality and wants to be a normal human, going so far as attempting to kill herself on a regular basis. Since vampires can’t be killed by ordinary beings, the attempts are pretty laughable but still she perseveres – you have to admire her tenacity. Samson (Lognay) is, like many men his age, the libido of a 16-year-old. Of course, he’s considerably older – he’s 55 but he looks like he’s in his mid-20s. That leads him to a transgression that threatens the family’s stability.

Of course, vampires don’t really exist but that doesn’t mean they don’t make for an entertaining mockumentary. Belgian cinema hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, but good films in a similar vein have come from that country before – see Man Bites Dog – and this one works very nicely. There is a very tongue-in-cheek sense of humor here that is occasionally unexpected, hitting you like a ton of bricks. For example, the vampires have human secretaries who take care of their daylight needs and occasionally serve as an alternate food source in case of an emergency – these are normally vampire fetishists who long to be immortal and hope to be rewarded eventually.

Their food supply are mostly immigrants and runaways – people who won’t be missed and who are kept in a pen out in the backyard. In all other respects however this is a normal suburban family with all the problems and issues that beset most modern families. Making that modern family vampiric adds an extra dimension and adds to the humor but it also allows the filmmakers to comment on those very issues without pointing the finger at society in general or suburbanites in particular.

I was rather surprised by this movie in that it I hadn’t heard virtually anything about it. So far as I know it got no US theatrical release and has mostly played the festival circuit in Europe. I caught it on the Sundance Channel here and so this might be rather hard to hunt down but it is definitely worth it, particularly those who love vampires and don’t mind poking gentle fun of themselves and vampires in general – and suburbanites. Definitely them.

WHY RENT THIS: Tongue-in-cheek funny. Nice idea and well-executed.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Drags on a bit.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some bad words and some depictions of bloodletting and sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Honestly? Couldn’t find any.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Animal Kingdom