Dom Hemingway

For a certain kind of English actor, the volatile ex-con is just behind Hamlet and Lear on the cinema bucket list. Jude Law has played Hamlet and has considerable time to go before he’s ready to do Lear – or before anyone asks for that – so plunking him into a Mona Lisa-like story of a parolee bad dad should work just fine.

And for a little while, it does. There’s some old-fashioned, Bob Hoskins-style head-butting right up top (followed by some decidedly un-Hoskins sexual merriment), and Law makes palpable his joy at brutishly spitting writer-director Richard Shepard’s long, vulgar monologues at a Shakespearean clip. If this were a stage performance, the front row would taste Law’s saliva by the faceful, fresh from the gaps in his prosthetic jailhouse teeth.

But Shepard, who most recently helmed some episodes of Lena Dunham’s Girls, loses his way as soon as Law’s title character loses the cash he needs to start his new life. After a first-act flush with gangster vinegar and bad-guy blood comes an unwelcome dousing of sugar water (and the saltwater of tearful self-pity). By the end, Law is stranded in a Nick Hornby version of Sexy Beast. At least he has Richard E. Grant playing his long-suffering best friend.