'They never see you coming; do they Bob?'

gradyharp

score 10/10

Dennis Lehane wrote the screenplay of his short story 'Animal Rescue' and Michaël R. Roskam directs. The film is a difficult one to classify – in part it is a family drama, a love story, a gang drama, and a mystery. But no matter how you chose to label it, it is a very, very fine little film. The cast is excellent down to the smallest part, the manner in which the 'mystery' unwinds is mesmerizing and surprising, and the cinematography by Nicolas Karakatsanis and the musical score by Marco Beltrami and Raf Keunen are particularly fine.

Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy in very fine form with a terrific Brooklyn accent) seems a bit slow witted (or does he simply have something to hide?) tends bar in his cousin Marv's (James Gandolfini, superb as always) bar. This run down Brooklyn bar is actually a drop bar for a Chechnya gang headed by Chovka (Michael Aronov): money made at night from drugs, gambling and prostitution get dropped off at a random bar, sometimes this bar. One night the bar gets robbed, which happened to be a drop night. Bob finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deep into the neighborhood's past where friends, families, and foes all work together to make a living - no matter the cost. There appears to be a moment of softness in the story when Bob rescues a beaten puppy that belongs to Nadia (Noomi Repace) and Nadia nurses the dog to health and insists Bob adopt the dog – which he does. The surprises begin – an evil guy Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts, a brilliant Belgian actor) raises threats, Detective Torres (John Ortiz) investigates the family, the bar, and the gang, and various people pop in and out of the story line, not the least of which is Marv's sister Dottie (Ann Dowd), and as a major surprise the end of the story uncovers secrets we have not expected.

This is a thinking person's film: you must stay with all the subtle clues during all the machinations of the story. But the cast – particularly Hardy and Gandolfini – are brilliant. Recommended.

gradyharp 25 January 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3170303/