Review: 'The Drop' Starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini

Walk into any bar in any part of the world and the bartender is the one who knows and sees everything. They see people at their most inhibited and, much like servants in a posh palatial estate, are treated as invisible by the people they serve. Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) is one of these bartenders in The Drop (formerly Animal Rescue, a title they should've kept), a pot-boiling crime yarn from famed novelist Dennis Lehane, writer of the similarly threatening small-town dramas Gone Baby Gone and MysticRiver. The Drop may have a cuddly little puppy at the heart of its story but there's nothing soft about this tense mob drama.

The Drop marks the English-language debut of Belgian director Michael R. Roskam, whose breakout film Bullhead was nominated for an Oscar. Roskam's sensibilities wouldn't seem to mesh with such a distinctly American crime story, but his attention to character detail crosses all borders. That said; the film gets off to a slow start as bland narration by Saginowski explains the particulars of a "drop bar", a place where the shadiest crime elements can drop off dirty money without drawing suspicion. In this small corner of Brooklyn is the bar that the soft-spoken Bob pours drinks and keeps his head down, while his cousin Marv (James Gandolfini) bosses him around and laments his lot in life. Marv used to own the bar, heck it's still named after him, until the mob elbowed their way in.

An armed robbery by a couple of local thugs would seem to be the story's spark but the true catalyst is Bob's discovery of a bruised pit bull puppy, dumped in the garbage of the scarred and fragile Nadia (Noomi Rapace). The two begin to bond over the battered pup, and their mutually dark pasts. There's something about Bob that doesn't quite click at first. He seems too nice for this hard-scrabble community. He's slow, but certainly not an idiot. He's got wits of the blue collar variety, the kind one learns on the streets and nowhere else. It's possible he's never left the city limits all his life, and lives in his parents' old home.

The introduction of a puppy and girlfriend into his life leaves him wide open to threats both familiar and foreign. In particular Matthias Schoenaerts, star of Roskam's Bullhead, makes for an imposing, off-balanced menace as Eric, a local tough with a dangerous rep. He senses weakness in Bob and exploits it; much like a crew of Chechen mobsters has exploited Marv. This is, in part, about the power victims give to their tormentors. Everybody knows everybody in this town, and everybody has a rep, whether it's deserved or not. Of course there's also a nosey cop (John Ortiz) sniffing around about the robbery, threatening to uncover much more about everything and everyone.

This is a complex story about simple people, but Lehane and Roskam throw more in the mix than is necessary. The opening ten minutes hit us with one subplot after another, including a decade-old murder mystery, and as a result the story takes forever to truly take shape. As Bob takes his pup, which he names Rocco, out for walks in the park; one might ask "Is this it? Is this what the movie's about?" Violence snaps things back into place and us back to attention. While not grisly or excessive, when violence occurs it's stark and done for a reason. It also helps boil each character down to their essence. In the case of Bob, we begin to sense there's more to him than the mumbling loner we've been privy to. In what has been a year of Tom Hardy taking on challenging new roles, his performance in The Drop is like nothing we've seen from him before. Dialing down his natural intensity and taking on a fairly convincing Brooklyn accent (the mumbling thing has got to go, though); Hardy fits into the role of a man who just wants slip into the background, never heard and never seen. Gandolfini brings a Sopranos-esque credibility to what is a very familiar sort of role for him. Rapace and Schoenaerts are both great, as well, her showing a rare vulnerability and him exuding the same contained rage we saw in Rust & Bone.

Considering all of the talent on both sides of the camera The Drop has been flying a little under the radar. And perhaps in a way that's fitting for such an unassuming film about unassuming people to be one the season's sleepers. It's a solid first effort on our shores for Roskam, and welcome entry to the overcrowded crime genre.

 Rating: 3.5 out of 5