The Drop

British actor Tom Hardy came to prominence with unforgettably noisy performances in movies like Bronson and Locke. With The Drop, he dominates the movie by playing a quiet soul whose main survival skill is slipping into the background.

Bob Saginowski (Hardy) may be too softhearted to be living in a mob-infested stretch of Brooklyn. He adopts an abused dog he finds stuffed in a trash can, even though he barely knows anything about animals. He allows an old woman to sit at the bar he tends for hours, drinking on the house. He can do this because, although it annoys Cousin Marv (the late James Gandolfini), the bar's real business has little to do with selling alcohol. It's a front for the Chechen mob who use it as a place to park some considerable sums. Bob is paid for not noticing the gangland cash moving through the bar.

But then, a pair of opportunistic and not terribly bright stickup men hold up the bar on the night when the wise guys have used it to hold cash. Even though the thieves make off with only $5,000 left in the register, the Chechen capo (Michael Aronov) who owns the place wants it back. The thieves also beat up an unsuspecting regular, forcing Marv and Bob to report the crime to an alert cop named Detective Torres (John Ortiz).

The sheer brazenness of the crime leads Bob and Detective Torres to suspect that the robbery conceals more than its relatively modest haul. Shy Bob becomes even more reluctant to connect with people because a misstep in this neighborhood can send someone to prison or the morgue. He is understandably wary of a nosy stranger (Matthias Schoenaerts) who asks uncomfortable questions about his dog. Maybe the woman (Noomi Rapace) who helps Bob take care of the animal is hiding from him?

In Locke, Hardy pulled off the unique feat of holding a viewer's attention by simply sitting in a car talking for 90 minutes. In The Drop, he says little, but his subtle facial expressions hint that Bob has outlasted many of his peers by knowing when to pay attention and which threats are idle and which ones are not. Bob may be introverted, but it gradually becomes clear that he's smarter than the other residents on his block.

In the hands of Belgian director Michael R. Roskam (the Oscar-nominated Bullhead, aka Rundskop), the neighborhood becomes a character in itself. The locations and exteriors look lived in, and it's easy to get a sense of the grim weather without hearing the actors remind us. At times, the setting seems ready to swallow Bob whole. Roskam's leisurely pace only seems to make the inevitable seem more ominous.

Surprisingly, the Swedish Rapace and Roskam's usual leading man Schoenaerts effortlessly fit in, and Gandolfini is terrific as a fellow with mob pretensions but little to back them up.

Working from his short story Animal Rescue, novelist Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River) delivers lots of snappy banter, but the ending feels a bit forced. Thanks to Hardy, getting to that conclusion is never a chore.

MovieStyle on 09/12/2014