Butler's Cinema Scene

Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini

“THE DROP”  My rating: C+  (Opens Sept. 12 at the Glenwood Arts, Eastglen 16 and Cinetopia theaters)   

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

One of these days Tom Hardy is going to star in a film equal to his talents and then, hoo boy, watch out.

Until then we’re going to have to be satisfied with the Brit actor being the best thing in flawed efforts like “Lawless,” “Locke” and “Warrior” or as a first-rate supporting player in films like “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and “Inception.”

In “The Drop”  the native Londoner plays Bob Saginowsky, a mumbling Brooklyn bartender who is so quiet, gentle and inoffensive that he reminds of the inarticulate Brooklyn butcher at the center of 1955’s “Marty” (for which Ernest Borgnine won the Oscar).

The solitary Bob has a soft spot for aged neighborhood lushes who can’t pay their tabs, much to the chagrin of his cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), who runs the tavern. He goes to mass several times a week (but never takes communion…what’s up with that?)  He lives alone in the house where he grew up…it’s like a time capsule of the 1960s.

And early in the film he adopts an abused pit bull puppy he discovers whimpering in a trash barrel on a frigid New York night.

For such a low-keyed guy, Bob is in a pretty hairy business. Cousin Marv’s Bar (a few years back Marv was forced to sell it to Chechen gangsters), is one of several “drop bars” where the local bookies deposit their daily take according to a top-secret schedule.

If you know when Marv’s is that day’s drop bar, you might be able to get away with a big haul.

The overly complicated screenplay by Dennis (Mystic River) Lehane — based on one of his short stories — balances Bob’s “domestic” life (including a tentative romance with the dog-loving waitress Nadia, played by Noomi Rapace) against the ever-more-dangerous machinations at the bar.

Noomi Rapace

Early in the film Marv’s is held up at gunpoint and the local Chechan crime lord expects  Marv and Bob make up for the loss of that night’s drop.

Complicating things is creepy neighborhood toughie Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts), a probable murderer who used to date (and beat) Nadia and who claims to be the real owner of the puppy Bob has recently adopted.

How can a guy like Bob — who at times seems positively dimwitted — hope to stand up to this sort of intimidation?

Let’s just say there’s more to Bob than what you see.  As Nadia says of pit bulls, the animals are born sweet…it’s the humans around them who make them mean. So it is with our protagonist.

Hardy must walk a fine line here, portraying a bland, vaguely stupid figure on the outside but suggesting unrevealed depths. Another actor might not be able to keep our interest in the unemotive Bob, but Hardy oozes charisma.  When he’s on screen you can’t look at anything else.

In his last screen role, the late Gandolfini plays the sort of desperate lowlife he specialized in over the years. He’s perfectly acceptable, but I can’t help wishing that his last release had been last summer’s “Enough Said,” a romantic comedy that showed just how much range the guy possessed.

Also, a tip of the hat to Hardy (British), Rapace (Swedish), and Schoenaerts (a Belgian) for nailing their Brooklynese accents.

Director Michael R. Roskam builds a nice case of trashcan suspense, and he gets a sense of time and place, but he cannot overcome the screenplay’s improbabilities and a confused narrative that leaves you wishing for a plot flowchart.

Still, it’s another memorable perf from Hardy.  His day is coming.

 | Robert W. Butler