It
is said that the longer a person owns a dog the more they get to
resemble each other. In “The Drop” within minutes of Bob (Tom Hardy)
finding a beat up puppy in a trash can, picks him up and holds him close
to his face, the resemblance is already there. The hurt puppy’s eyes
are reflected in the eyes of the man who just rescued him. This is a pit
bull puppy who almost steals the movie away and yet defines Bob in many
ways.

Rosco, as the puppy is named by Bob, is in the trash can
of a waitress, who owns the house, named Nadia (Noomi Rapace), who may
or may not know how the dog was in the garbage. After Bob confesses to
her that he never had  a pet, and doesn’t know how to take care of a
dog, she volunteers to help him go shopping for the necessities and
provides a love interest for Bob who is very slow on the uptake and in
many other instances.

Bob is a bartender in a bar once owned by,
and still named after, his cousin Marvin (James Gandolfini) until it
was taken over by Chechens, who seem to rule the neighborhood, headed by
Chovka (Michael Aronov). There are peripheral characters such as 
creepy Eric (Matthias Schoenaertas) who seems to have originally owned
the puppy, has some connections to Nadia and boasts about murdering a
man a decade earlier. There is also Detective Torres (John Oritz) who is
more annoying than detective and Dottie (Ann Dowd) as Marvin’s sister
who seems to have been added to pad out the movie which was originally a
short story.

The acting by all, including Gandolfini in his last
film role, is okay though Rapace seems just off key and until the end
you don’t really see and/or understand what a great job Hardy does. I
did try to catch the real name of Rosco who certainly deserves credit
but didn’t see it.

As a Brooklyn gangster old fashioned thriller
“The Drop” is slow getting to the revelation, which I admit caught me by
surprise, but that was not enough to save the film.