They also serve who pour and observe.
That's Bob Saginowski's modus operandi. He's bartender-for-life at Cousin Marv's on the cruel side of Brooklyn, a thirty-something loner living in the house his late parents bought and, from the looks of it, furnished in the 1970s.
Bob notices things, which we gather is a pretty solid survival strategy for this corner of Brooklyn. There's menace in the air, from Marv (James Gandolfini), from the customers, from any out-of-the-ordinary encounter on the street, from the guys we see casing the bar, to the cop (John Ortiz) who shows up to investigate the robbery those thugs carry out.
Bob noticed one of the masked gunmen was wearing an old watch that no longer worked. That detail is going to get a lot of people into a lot of trouble.
Because Cousin Marv's is a "drop," a place where low-rent bookies and dealers leave bundles of cash for the crime bosses who control them. You rob a "drop," the world's about to drop on your head.
"The Drop" is a simmering thriller from the writer who gave us "Mystic River" and "Gone, Baby Gone," a tale heavy with the weight of violence we know is coming. Eventually.
Tom Hardy gives Bob the potential for mayhem. But on the surface, this guy his boss calls a "sphinx" is a pussycat. He rescues a brutalized puppy from a trash can, convinces Nadia (Noomi Rapace) to keep the dog until the weekend while he thinks it over, and then keeps his word to this total stranger. He picks up this pit bull, nurses it to health and uses it to talk Nadia with the short temper and frightened eyes into teaching him to take care of it.
Dennis Lehane's story has a touch of "Rocky" about it on the big screen, a big galoot softened by a pet and the woman who seems to come with that pet. But even though this is a world we recognize, there's nothing sentimental about its depiction. Everybody knows everybody else and the locals all know what the cops never figured out, who killed this guy nicknamed "Glory Days" 10 years before.
