The filmmakers had me at “Tom Hardy with a puppy”. If you need more convincing, read on. Following in the a tradition of gritty underbelly, anti-Godfather-glamour, street crime movies in the Mean Streets mould, The Drop is penned by Dennis (Gone Baby Gone) Lehane, directed by Belgian Michaël (Bullhead) Roskam, and features the late James Gandolfini in his final role, alongside Noomi Rapace, Tom Hardy, and the cutest pit bull puppy in Brooklyn.
The drop of the title is Cousin Marv’s – a seedy Brooklyn bar where dirty money, owed to vicious Chechen crimelords, is deposited before collection. Marv (Gandolfini), is a washed-up, wannabe gangster, (“I had something once. I was respected. I was feared”), his bar now under Chechen control. Bob (Hardy) is Marv’s cousin and bartender, a quiet guy who keeps himself to himself, until he discovers a beaten up puppy in a trashcan. The trashcan in question belongs to Nadia (Rapace), and so begins a slowburn tale of sociopaths, murderers, dangerous romance, robbery gone wrong, and dog walking.
Masterful acting, assured direction, hard-boiled writing tighter than a taxman’s necktie, and suitably noir cinematography all add up to a movie that takes its time to get under your skin and ask: in an amoral world, where do we draw the lines between good and bad? Perhaps just being nice to animals and knowing how to shoot straight is enough…
