TOM HARDY & JAMES GANDOLFINI IN THE DROP

year: 2014 rating: ***1/2

With a gentle lug countenance of Marlon Brando in ON THE WATERFRONT, a voice crossed between Mike Tyson and John Leguizamo, the meticulous patience of Harvey Keitel’s crime cleaner in PULP FICTION, and the cutest pit bull puppy in town, Tom Hardy’s Bob, as well as his cousin Marv – whose character, played by the late James Gandolfini, is actually named Cousin Marv – both run a dive bar that’s a drop for funneling mobster cash.

The partners have obviously been through the mill but now, in a sort of deadpan retirement mode, they're merely used as pawns, especially Bob… Yet he’s got something to live for: After finding the puppy bloodied up in a trashcan, he raises it like a child along with ingénue Nadia (Noomi Rapace).

Promoted as a gangster style thriller, THE DROP is actually a slowburn character-study where Bob is either mildly pestered by a cop after a pivotal robbery, or is verbally bullied by a local thug who claims to have owned the dog, and wants it back... with a price. Gandolfini’s intentions are a bit muddled further into the slowburn Neo Noir storyline, making Hardy the one to center on. He’s the kind of guy who must be hiding something, or holding back – or holding back something he’s trying to hide. And that’s what makes this cinematic sheep in wolf's clothing, centering on a wolf in sheep's clothing, eventually pay off in silver dollars.