To call it Jude Law’s best performance in years may sound like a back-handed compliment, but I would recommend catching this down the road…maybe for free…maybe on an airplane.
What Works: So it takes what I thought was going to be a typical Guy Ritchie-Cockney-Gangsters-Flashing-Around-Their-Ridiculous-Accents crime caper, and transcends that genre. “Dom” starts out rough, with the title character giving a beyond-showy monologue about his cock while getting head in prison, but the substance begins to develop around the end of the first third, when Dom goes to visit his old boss (the always-welcome Damian Birchir), a steely crime lord who owes him for keeping his mouth shut.
The movie’s secret is that it’s less of a prototypical “British gangster film,” and more of a character study about whether Dom (a loser-king who’s like a tragic and funny Shakespeare character) deserves to win. He goes back and forth between failing and success, and the plot twists feel like believably cosmic acts. You don’t know if Dom is going to make it or not, and the brilliance of the movie is by asking “Does he really deserve to?” A nearly-existential question that most crime movies would never ask.
What Doesn’t: The flashy first 15 to 20 minutes feel like a different movie than the deeper, better one it winds up being. I’m not sure that the people who’ll really wind up loving “Dom” in the end will sit through the beginning before going to something else on Netflix.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Have a great Memorial Day Weekend everyone. Some new reviews tomorrow as well.