The Drop

This film features the final performance by James Gandolfini, and it's a beauty. Luckily for the viewer, it's not even the best thing about the movie. That would be the central performance delivered by Tom Hardy as Bob, a seemingly meek bartender of questionable intelligence who works for Cousin Marv (Gandolfini). Hardy disappears into this role, and will have you in awe that this is actually the guy who played Bane in The Dark Night Rises. The bar that Cousin Marv and Bob occupy is a drop bar, where many of the gambling winnings in a seedier part of Brooklyn wind up in a safe. One night, the bar is held up, and Cousin Marv has to hand over five grand. This puts Marv in debt to scary Chechen mobsters, now proprietors of the bar Marv once owned. Bob and Marv must devise a plan to pay the mobsters back, and when they do, they find themselves in an even deeper dilemma. Gandolfini's Marv owes plenty to his Tony Soprano. He comes off like Tony after his power has been taken away, and his wife has abandoned him. The screenplay even gives him a nagging sister and a father in a rest home. Hardy delivers a character that's always sympathetic, even when he reveals himself to be a bit more complicated than he first seems. It's just another great performance in what is starting to become a rather impressive list of achievements.