Hit: This is a well done story about a man who is not likeable and continually makes bad choices.
Dom (Jude Law) is full of himself. He’s been an angry criminal his whole life.
As the film begins he’s in jail and telling the audience, over and over again, why his “cock” is a work of art. You don’t see the person giving him a BJ but you know he’s getting one.
That is the opening scene. He’s Dom Hemingway and the audience and the other character’s in the film know this. He gets released from jail after serving 12 years for not ratting out Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir).
His first act is to find the guy who supported his wife while he was in prison and beat the holy livin’ crap out of him. He’s not seen his daughter in all this time and wants to see her and maybe develop a relationship. But he is afraid of reaching out because he knows he's done wrong by her. To deal with it, he drinks himself into his next mistake.
This film is dark, Dom is dark and makes a slew of bad choices thinking he’s invincible. Did the film work? Yes. Was the subject likeable? Not to very many people. And that is the hard part of this film. It is really difficult to like Dom. However he does have a friend in the film Dickie Black (Richard E. Grant) and it is this friend that eases the film through Dom’s tirades.
Law is fully engaged with the character Dom and played him well. It is just difficult to like the character. Birchir is very good as the mob chief who owes Dom money for his silence. Grant is superb as Dom’s grounding friend. Richard Shepard both wrote and directed this film. The writing and direction was good, it is simply a dark film with an unlikeable character.
Overall: Not very likeable.